Fear and Impatience:an essay on the democratic transition in Latin America

-by Julio María Sanguinetti Coirolo-

translated by D. Ohmans
(c) copyright 2011

Text imprint Buenos Aires, Fondo de Cultura Económica,
1991

INDEX

By Way of Prologue
The Spirit of the Eighties
Psychology of Transition
Tradition, Consensus and the Vote
The World in which We Live
Legacies of the Past
The Economy as Risk
Peace, a Political Project
Limitation and Referenda
Morality for Transitions
The Uniform and the Suit
Requirements for Governability

BY WAY OF PROLOGUE
POLITICAL circumstances led the author of this essay to be a protagonist, in
Uruguay, in the process of seeking a democratic exitway following the
dictatorship which in 1973 had broken with the nation's institutional
tradition. The election over, in November of 1984 the citizenry confided in us
the responsibility of conducting the government during the period of democratic
reconstruction. It was essential to restore political and civic habits, newly
achieve a fluid institutional functioning, to reactivate an at that time
prostrate economy and manage the tensions pertaining to a post-dictatorship,
with all the accumulation of passions that that implies. They were five years
of enormous effort, begun with great hope and ended with an immense
tranquility. We lived them alongside analogous processes in Brazil and
Argentina, in the Latin American context of the external debt. And we completed
it turning over a peaceful and pacified nation.
Many opinions have been spilled over the manner in which the public
negotiations were conducted, but the success of the Uruguayan transition,
resulting in a climate of stability, has not been disputed. Journalistic
curiosity has always fallen on interviewing us concerning the keys to this
process and the lived alternatives; for its part, academic interest has
centered on a more mediated analysis of the institutional, economic or military
factors. All that has motivated us to write some reflections on the Uruguayan
experience, compared with that of other countries of Latin America. We know
that in this material there are no generalizations possible, because there is
no dogmatic thesis. Yet the analogies of situations permit finding common
inspirations or apparent errors at times.
We deal with neither an historical book nor a chronicle. Much less with a
memoir (we only believe in posthumous memoirs or the soliloquies of retirement).
We do attempt to clarify some concepts and above all to transcribe possible
conclusions from our experience. The proposition is that they may be useful
for those who assume political responsibility in periods of transition, as for
the conscientious citizens who occupy themselves with these themes. We are
confident that the academic community too, to whom we try to contribute with
the meditations of one who has had time to reflect upon the filly only after
he had to ride her, will be interested.
JULIO MARÍA SANGUINETTI
Montevideo, September 1990
THE SPIRIT OF THE EIGHTIESThe society has become enriched,
autonomous, has become at once the most
individualist and the most uniform, or, to
state things negatively, less aristocratic
and less revolutionary.
FRANÇOIS FURET
THE BICENTENNIAL of the French Revolution has been celebrated with a
clamorous triumph of its liberal ideals against the Marxist utopia that it
combatted throughout the latest century. The fall of the Bastille, the episode
symbolic of the Revolution, has its counterpart, symmetric and foreboding, in
the fall of the Berlin wall, the Wagnerian epilogue for the communist regimes
of Eastern Europe.
The eighties have also been a time of democracy for Latin America. Since
Independence, never before had there been more democratic republican systems.
The sole Cuban exception appears more insular than ever when the Sandinista
regime on one extreme and that of General Pinochet on the other culminate in
democratic openings, crowned by free elections.
So as Eastern Europe begins a transitional stage passing from Marxist
autocracies to democratic systems, in Latin America military authoritarians
cede way to republican governments elected by the people. Naturally in Europe
the change is more profound for it transcends the political domain: it deals
with returning to the market economy after a collectivist experience, with
revolutionary modifications even in matters of property. In Latin America, with
the partial exception of Nicaragua, which derived from a Marxist system, the
challenge is to construct--or reconstruct--a legal state of a democratic
nature, starting from the free election of authorities.
The economists have spoken of the "lost decade" due to the economic
tribulations that impeded growth in our hemisphere. It is a pessimistic vision
that does not consider the advent of democracy, with its note of hope. The air
of the times has changed. A growing urban civilization exhibits the dynamic
vigor of modern cities where the new skyscrapers coexist with the marginalized
sectors that this march leaves straggling behind. The middle classes adopt an
eagerness to participate which democratizes social life while at the same time
they question the system of political institutions. The consumer society
erupts, diversifying production but inaugurating the neurosis of "having."
Ideologies drop back; their schemes appear aged. The citizenry are tired of
slogans and messianic guerrillas. The revolutions are sclerotic. The "new
military orders" as well. Laboriously, the idea begins anew to make way that
the human individual, singular and concrete, is at the heart of democracy and
that the miraculous drug of happiness in prefabricated systems can no longer be
given.
This process meant, from the end of the year 1983 until 1985, accession to
democracy by Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil, respectively. The method was
different in the three cases:

Uruguay returned to democracy in an election after a long four-year
process of negotiations, which included a constitutional referendum and an
internal party election of a national character.

Argentina abruptly inaugurated democracy after the fall of the military
regime due to the defeat of the Malvinas. There was no previous negotiation and
the overthrown president-general handed over power to another general who would
simply preside over the holding of elections.

Brazil emerged democratized from an indirect election within the system
conceived by the military regime to open the internal transitional period with
a civilian president elected by a Parliament predominated by the forces loyal
to the regime. A happy political combination of Tancredo Neves (spearheading
the opposition with José Sarney, of the officialist faction) unexpectedly
yielded a formula that gave the Presidency to the democratic opposition.
On the military plane, the alternatives for transition were also different in
the three nations: while Brazil and Uruguay handled the problems of the
military re-insertion without greater turbulence, Argentina had no respite from
the pronouncements, rumors and rebellions that constantly threatened the
stability of the democratic government.
Meanwhile, their economic evolutions were not analogous either. Brazil
maintained a growth dynamic led by spectacular exporting, but inflation was
growing and ended in hyperinflation. At the same time, hyperinflation also
arrived in Argentina, after years of instability and stagnation in its national
product. Uruguay, for its part, sustained a rhythm of growth for the five years
and beyond in its economic variables, registering three years of decline due to
inflation and two of increase, although without decontrol.
At the end of the decade, the years 1989 and 1990, a little unexpectedly,
new openings were seen in Paraguay, Nicaragua and Chile.

In Paraguay, the change is produced at root by a coup of State from within
the system. While many observers speculated that one dealt with nothing more
than a military replacement, general Rodriguez opens the country towards
democracy, through elections and an unprecedented liberalization.

In Nicaragua the elections arrive which the Sandinistas had promised. The
right, who in Nicaragua like the rest of Central America insisted that the
Sandinistas would break their promise, felt repressively defrauded. At the
same time, the left, within as well as abroad, unhappily absorbed the impact of
an electoral triumph by the opposition that no one thought possible even in
hypothesis.

In Chile, the regime of general Pinochet fulfilled its promise of opening,
later losing the constitutional referendum and arrived at the elections in a
climate of liberty.
None of the three cases shows the same military evolution. In Paraguay, the new
situation counted on support, for the opening is born from within the Army
itself. In Nicaragua and Chile it comes from the particularities of civilian
governors who can accomplish their transition with politicized armies,
commanded by their previous chiefs who not only maintain their military unity
but also represent a very relevant sector of public opinion.
Thus, economically, different roads are traveled. In Chile the new
government gives assurances of maintaining the nation along the line on which
it was found, with a very open economy in vigorous growth. In Nicaragua, a
destroyed economy should, as well as reactivate itself, change its fundamentals
moving from an asphyxiating oppressive collectivization to the restoration of a
market economy.
When we speak of transition we do so in the sense of a period in which the
restored democratic institutions must coexist with remnants and problems of the
de facto period. Strictly, transition will be that moment of passage
of the de facto situation to the recognition of the state of law, but
this criterion seems too formalistic and limited for the time. So from there,
in a wider sense, we consider it as an effort at reconstruction that advances
dodging the inherited obstacles.
We are too close to the facts to be able to see them with sufficient
historical perspective. Some of these transitions have recently begun and,
probably will have to traverse difficult moments analogous to those that
characterized the previous ones or those which--even before--returned democracy
to nations like Bolivia, Peru or Ecuador, or shall pay the stipend still
pending for the Central American democracies, reestablished in the midst of
violence and crisis.
The political class already performs an important work of analysis and
clarification. To them it suffices to add the experience of those who have been
protagonists in these processes, assuming responsibilities within the limits
imposed by a reality always much more demanding and complex than the doctrine.
Without evaluating the economic conditions or the state of opinion, the risks
that are experienced and which often have to be hidden so as not to sow public
alarm, are very difficult to know fully from afar due to their extreme
complexity.
The dramatic destiny of a democratic government is that what is avoided is
not seen. Only that which occurs is judged. But what they managed to avoid, and
in this manner construct the peace, should not be told because it was not in
the people's experience. To outline the conflict, to pacify passions, to
patiently proceed so that all the actors proceed expressing their roles and
occupying their space, to construct an economic climate of confidence and
tranquility, reaching a tacit state of opinion in which the fantasy of a State
coup vanishes, comprise objectives that, when fulfilled, measure the success of
a transition. Nevertheless, they are not always immediately appreciated; only
when they come to be commitments are they valued in their real dimension.
Despite the deformed perspective that receives the effect of this agenda
which seems a non-agenda, the man of the State should persist in the effort.
The result of a pacified nation will be for all, governors and governed, the
greatest recompense.
PSYCHOLOGY OF TRANSITIONI am myself and my circumstances, and
if I do not save myself within them, I do
not save myself.
JOSÉ ORTEGA Y GASSET
TRANSITIONS depend upon the administration of two sentiments: fear and
impatience. The fear of those who move away, the impatience of those who are
arriving. They are taking the step of renunciation more or less pressured by
the circumstances, but assuming the risk that that act represents what many of
their companions view as a surrender or ingenuousness. Others experience the
triumphalist euphoria of the democratic return and that inflates their spirit,
excited by surroundings where everything is reclaimed and "now."
The fear of which we speak should not be confounded with an ominous or
paralyzing fear. Far from it. In the military mentality there is a traditional
cult of courage, belonging to an intellectual and spiritual formation conceived
by war. It must always be presumed that the military possesses a discipline of
character in which pride and shame overcome the natural paralysis of fear. The
question is that these military are acting outside of their environment, in a
political scenario where they feel to be outsiders, despite being immersed in
it. The unknown creates insecurity and that is accentuated by lack of
confidence towards the political directorate that begins to appear on the other
side of the familiar.
In these situations they normally play a role concerning the influence of
civil and family surroundings. In those one might find a stubborn factor of
resistance, at times inflamed. We deal with those who have made a political
career in the de factor situation, who had been promoted in the
administration, whose previous pictures have been replaced, some impresarios
who have benefited or simply profit from a government that dominates the trade
unions and carries out a political economy without concessions to public
opinion. All those dread losing position or being victims of revanchist
attitudes.
The military have arrived at the situation of transition after an internal
process of debate. Only very exceptional circumstances could have generated a
rare unanimity. In the Uruguayan situation a long lapse occurred in which the
idea of arriving at an opening was maturing, yet with guarantees that would
preserve the institution from the attacks--perceived as inevitable--of their
longtime enemies or of politicians impassioned by the years of confrontation.
In such a situation the military position is always convenient of warning
against the risks the institution runs upon leaving power and positioning
itself as possible victim of revenge. Very difficult on the other hand will be
that of those who defend the idea of the opening, whether out of democratic
conviction, or from considering that the historical time of the regime is over,
whether from believing that it is the best way to preserve the military
institution from the evils pertaining to absolute power, or perhaps for a
varied mix of all these reasons.
The dynamic of the facts advances leaving some with the comfort of
critique, owners of the menu of reproach against whatever transpires, and the
others with the weight of a growing responsibility. It is natural that they
feel, then, the reasonable fear of any rational person before a difficult
decision, and that the other exacerbate it even more with the admonitory tone
which prepares the case for an eventual settling of accounts.
In the political medium, a parallel evolution separates those who bet on
the fall of the regime without negotiation or transaction and who want to take
advantage of the circumstances to come out ahead, although at the cost of some
concessions. In this field also the radical attitude is the most comfortable:
it takes a principled intransigent position and awaits the miracle; while
meanwhile they accuse--more openly or more secretly--those of continuationism
or accomodationism who assume the difficult responsibility of crossing the
minefield to find a solution for the nation.
For such moments there are no prefabricated recipes nor magical formulas.
As in all political negotiation, an appreciation of the bargaining power held
by each sector depends upon the circumstances. After the defeat in the
Malvinas, the Argentinean military government lacked political and even
psychological strength, and this allowed an exit practically without
negotiation. For its part, the Chilean government of general Pinochet, with a
situation of economic growth and military unity, possessed great strength which
even permitted the retention of the ex-president as commander in chief of the
Army. In contrast, in Uruguay, the deteriorated economic situation and the
exhaustion of the mission that the Armed Forces themselves had defined for
their intervention diminished their power. Nevertheless, they maintained clear
military control that enabled them to remain in power a long time more. The
fundamental debate then moved to the heart of the Armed Forces where it was
indispensable that the majority begin to understand that their permanence only
would mean deterioration of the institution and no solution for the nation.
It is always difficult to assume an Ortegan "circumstance." Politics has
dreamt of itself as the great constructor of a world of generous ideals and now
has to grapple with a reality full of miseries. The military wished for itself
the redemptive mission of savior and now, with the heroic space gone, must come
to agreement with those it sought to replace. The existential challenge is not
only taking account of this "circumstance" but also of "redeeming" it so as to
"redeem" itself, which was not considered when the Spanish master is cited.
Starting from reality and its recognition, our ideals should be translated into
a project for action, never into a paralyzing resignation.
What is fundamental is, as always, to be clear about goals. If, for the
politicians, these are full democratic restoration, with the fewest possible
concessions during the time of transition, and for the military is preserving
revanchist attitudes or political power that modifies its rules of internal
play, the effort should be directed at reconciling both visions.
At that point, the military will always tend toward an autonomic activity
concerned with not being subordinate to the government, even when they do not
expressly say so and even when at times they do not do so tacitly. Inversely,
the politicians attempt to keep their hands free, without any class
limitations, returning without more ado to the day previous to the State coup.
Both must be convinced that such is not possible in an extreme form and that
without reciprocal concessions, fundamentally without reciprocal guarantees,
there is no durable solution.
The problem is in the distrust. The military fear that the politicians
will divide them and manipulate the chain of command and obedience with
partisan criteria; they fear that investigations will be initiated for excesses
committed in the past; they fear that the leaders with whom they speak and
eventually settle, afterwards cannot control the situation even when they act
in good faith. In turn, the politicians fear that the military will remain
sequestered in their organization with the capacity to return at any moment;
they fear that without judgments or investigations of the previous excesses a
psychology of impunity will be consolidated; they fear that in certain classes
of issues like syndicalism or public order its influence will be excessive.
For there to be an understanding it is necessary to transcend the
reciprocal distrust. While the politicians keep seeing a secret coup behind
every military and he in them a subversive or accomodationist incapable of
fighting for morality against the enemies of the system, it is impossible to
construct anything solid. Confidence has to be attained through deeds. One or
the other should begin by recognizing their distinct visions, yet being very
meticulous in the fulfillment of those agreements that are being achieved. Thus
will be born, first respect and later confidence in the reciprocal loyalty.
Thus, the initial understanding of a few on each side, who believe in the exit,
will come to be extended and amplified. The day that that confidence is
generalized, in which one does not speak of "them" and "us," the transition can
be considered completed and will then enter into normality.
TRADITION, CONSENSUS AND THE VOTEWhoever wishes to reform an ancien
regime into a free State will do well to
preserve, at least, the shadow of the old
institutions.
NICHOLAS MACHIAVELLI
THE URUGUAYAN transition had in its favor some factors of signal importance:
the democratic tradition of the country, development over a long period of
previous negotiation, the support of the union of the parties and social forces
who maturely accepted the necessity of contributing and, definitively, the
legitimacy of the citizenry's vote, which frames the process with two great
plebiscites, that of 1980 and that of April 1989.
Tradition, basically, is a set of values, or procedures, of sensibilities,
that comprise a national mentality.
Beneath the conjunctures there are always permanencies, difficult to
abolish, given that the ruptures, even those that attempt to be foundational,
take elements from a past which is present in the people's manner of thinking
and acting. Also, they incorporate elements that endure when the time of
restoration arrives.
Uruguay dealt with the cultural weight of an old democracy, patiently
constructed over more than a century. Something analogous occurred in Chile. In
Argentina a democratic ideal existed, nevertheless contradicted by the deeds
repeated throughout more than half a century. Nicaragua, however, where an
interesting yet dangerous period of change is conducted, has a different
patrimony: there the attempt is not to reconstruct but to construct for the
first time a system for which they do not possess the experience, the habits
assumed by a people secularly accustomed to the excesses of authoritarianism.
The procedure by which one arrives at the institutional opening naturally
influences its development. In Argentina there was not a previous negotiation;
when the government of Dr. Raúl Alfonsín assumed power in December of
1983 there existed not even a minimal understanding between the highest
political directors and the military hierarchies. In our case, on the other
hand, the exit was preceded by long negotiations carried out between 1980 and
1984. Except in the final stage, they ended in failure and more than once the
dialogue was interrupted due to the conviction they were fruitless.
Nevertheless, this period served for the military--little accustomed to
negotiate--to learn to do so, and the political directorate--very alien to the
military mentality--would begin to better understand its characteristics.
A period of dialogue, then, is a favorable circumstance: the deadlocks,
the ghettos, the attitudes of enclosure within one's own group are incompatible
with a time that requires, above everything, reciprocal comprehension.
The widest social consensus possible is another factor of positive
relevance in the process of transition. To exhaust it in the democratic
election of a government is an insufficient vision, from which something
lasting would be hard to produce.
A recently elected democratic government initiates enormous expectations
that often can translate even into the promise of an age of prosperity. After
years of asphyxiation all the claims mount up. The simplistic image spreads
with great ease that democracy means some bread under one's arm. An obvious
source of disenchantment, exploitable by the enemies of the democratic
emergence, is necessary to keep from society. For that nothing is more
opportune than an understanding between political, economic and social forces.
In Spain this was done in the Pact of Moncloa (1977), in Uruguay in the so-
called National Coordination Programmatic, whose basis was laid in 1984, before
the election, in the presence of the principal candidates. The latter was not
as effective in actuality as the Spanish precedent: it did not last that long,
a wave of strikes diminished its credibility from the beginning and each sector
interpreted the accords in a subjective manner according to its interests. In
any case, it served to avoid clashes and opened a fluid dialogue between
sectors that previously was not practiced.
The expression of the citizenry's public opinion, fundamentally through
the vote, becomes another decisive factor in the generation of the legitimacy
necessary for the reconstruction of the system. Necessarily, upon leaving a
dictatorship elements and problems emerging from the past are projected into
the following period. The necessary transactions between the forces in struggle
necessitate the construction of transitory institutions or guarantee mechanisms
to throw off doubt concerning the democratic pulchritude of the new situation.
That is natural, logical and even desirable--that no one is left out--yet it
always awakens suspicions stemming from past confrontations, if not abuses,
especially from those hyperjuridical or intellectualized mentalities who accept
nothing but the abstract implementation of the system.
In Uruguay, the essence of the Naval Club Pact, which spearheaded the
transition, was the acceptance, only for the span of one year, of some
institutions which--previously agreed--the exiting government decreed. The full
validity of the democratic Constitution voted upon in 1967 was accepted, the
Institutional Acts repealed that had been modified in the name of the de
facto powers and in their place were included transitory norms which would
offer some guarantees to the military forces. Those were:
1) The creation of a Council of National Security, to be headed by the
president of the Republic and integrating three ministers and the three chief
commanders. The organ was strictly valuative, lacking all executive power,
with a civilian majority and only to be convened by the president. Its
constitutional powers could not have been more anodyne, but it nevertheless
provoked resistances, due to the antecedent of similar previous proposals, in
which the organ appeared as a true controller or fiscalizer of the government.
The partisans and adversaries of the Naval Club Pact spent rivers of ink
discussing this theme that later, among the facts, lacked all relevance. Such a
council was never convened. Conceived as an organ of special assessment for
certain restricted materials, the assured the military a natural domain where
they could translate their points of view into Executive Power. In fact, the
dialogue turned out to be so frequent and fluid that nothing would be added by
the formal reunion of that assessment body.
2) The establishment of a state of insurrection, emergency powers for
very grave cases of insurrection, in which individual guarantees could be
suspended by initiative of the Executive Power and through law approved by an
absolute majority of both chambers. It represented a logical institution in any
democratic Constitution encumbered by all the guarantees of the situation. We
said then that the danger was not establishing the norm, but that there could
be a situation of this nature after only a year from the restoration of
democracy. Happily nothing occurred and the rule disappeared a virgin.
3) In cases of promotions to general, it was foreseen that the staff of
the Forces would propose double the number of candidates to the vacancies
produced, leaving the Executive Power with approval by the Senate in charge.
Nothing from the other world, as is seen.
In short, instead of a free election and free constitutional re-establishment,
there would only be accepted, transitionally, some norms that in no way
betrayed the democratic principle and were presented with the necessary
guarantees.
Looking at them from today's perspective, the discussions in this respect
seem somewhat far-fetched, only explicable by prejudices and the persistence of
certain political prescriptions that could have been surmounted in a wider
accord.
In the Uruguayan process the citizenry had two great occasions to express
itself: the plebiscite of November of 1980 and that of April, 1989. In the
first instance, the military government submitted to the public's verdict a
project of constitutional reform which proposed an institutional emergence and
culminated in elections, yet with restrictions such that the majority of the
political forces resolved to oppose it. The Yes side launched a copious
publicity campaign; the No's were banned from access to paid advertising space.
As the principal political directors our civic rights were restricted, such
that we could not appear in the press media. At that time I wrote in the daily
El Día articles concerning international themes or matters of
timely social interest; I succeeded in getting published an article titled
"Towards a No on the 30th," where I maintained that a negotiation could move
forward, but now only an attitude of resistance would do to a constitutional
project that had not been negotiated with anyone and which would be imposed,
installing also a nominal democracy, incompatible with the essence of their
system. From then on that publication meant an immediate engagement for the
intelligence services and later a pecuniary sanction consisting of a 50 percent
reduction in my payment received as a senior deputy and minister with more than
ten years experience in political charges, besides other computable services.
When the campaign was launched, the government of the time assumed an
outcome favorable to Yes. An economic euphoria was being lived, artificial as
later was seen, but greater than any other in recent years. Its basis was an
enormous overvaluation of the national currency, the result of an anticipatory
pre-fixing mechanism of a sort linked to the dollar with six months of
anticipation. It was attempted, by that means, to maintain inflation controlled
at the same time as inducing a reactivation. An identical system was applied
then in Chile and Argentina, where the de facto governments allowed
being dragged along in a manner disseminated by economists of the international
financial organisms and by some North American academics.
The Yes propaganda campaign insisted that elections could be arrived at
via the new Constitution, while that of No left the nation pathless; in quite
an open fashion it threatened the population with that a No would prolong,
perhaps indefinitely, the possibilities of a free election. The polls seemed to
ratify this conclusion and Gallup published a study whereby Yes won by a round
percentage.
Thus we arrived at the plebiscite, in a climate of enormous uncertainty.
The campaign in opposition had been person by person, without higher
organization given the situation of the parties and trade union paralysis. The
surveys were negative; only three presentations had been done in movie houses.
We lacked then, a frame of reference. The only really significant episode
consisted of a television program in which two government figures (the State
counsel doctor Viana Reyes, an ex-magistrate of solid juridical grounding, and
the lawyer colonel Bolentini, State minister and councilor, a controversial yet
able polemicist) confronted a veteran nationalist politician, doctor Pons
Echeverry, and a university professor of the red political party, though
without militancy, doctor Enrique Tarigo. The latter acted in such a convincing
manner in impugning the proposition, producing such an impact upon public
opinion unaccustomed to the exercise of criticism, that he was automatically
transformed into a political figure whose activity culminated as vice president
of the Republic during the years when I ran the government.
The night before the plebiscite, leaving the editing of El
Día, I confessed to Manuel Flores Mora, politician and journalist of
the red party, my fears about the result. Aiming his eyes at me he said:
--Look, Julio, we used to be called the Switzerland of the Americas and
now we are going to demonstrate whether someday we really merit that title. It
does not move me that they say dictatorships always win plebiscites, because
plebiscites of this nature have not been held in countries with democratic
traditions. I believe that we truly were the "Switzerland" and am confident we
shall demonstrate that again...
At last the election arrived and the outcome was 885,824 No votes (58%)
and 643,858 Yes votes (42%).
This result provides a very interesting example of the dubious value of
polls in moments when public opinion lacks public liberty and fear often
inhibits the free expression of an opinion. This case was also an interesting
example of the negative effect of propagandistic saturation on television. The
campaign, according to the opinion of reliable publicists, was not bad, its
message being clear and even convincing. But the abuse of the media and the
excessive intensity of the reiterations produced a negative reaction in a
society that felt obliged to vote for what was proposed without benefit of
analysis nor possible option. This conclusion was much assisted by an absurdity
added of late according to which, in the first election to be held at the end
of that year, there would be a single candidate emanating from the governing
institutions of the regime themselves. This was easy to ridicule and wrested
credibility from a campaign whose intensity translated into an increasingly
authoritarian tone.
This plebiscite marked an era. The reaction of the military regime was
irate at first, but soon they began to converse. Within their ranks, those who
had invented that approach were weakened and those military who envisioned the
necessity of a solution began to express themselves a little more openly.
The plebiscite of 1980 comprises the beginning of political opening. That
is what occurred between that date and the other plebiscite: that of April
1989, the last year of the democratic government in which the law of amnesty
for the military could be voted upon. The nature of the issue, the moment when
it was done (a year of general elections) and the long debate that preceded it
gave it the character of a plebiscite on the entire transition. The judgment
there was also clear--1,082,454 for Yes (56%) and 799,104 (44%) for No--and
with that the process was vested with an indisputable democratic legitimacy.
It should be added that between those two pronouncements occurred,
likewise, another two: the internal election of 1982 and the national election
of 1984.
The first was an election of authorities for the parties created by the
same act, the same day, on the same electoral tables. Its convening resulted
from the military government not considering the old directors legitimate and
demanded to deal with those who really represented party opinion. In fact it
turned into a national election and even though the Broad Front was not
authorized, it appeared by means of the write-in vote. In every case, the
intra-party debate was held around those terms: compromisers or collaborators
with the military government and opponents, themselves divided, in turn, into
two modalities - the radicals and the moderates, who already aimed at a search
for a negotiated solution.
The other popular pronouncement was the election of November 1984.
Naturally a government was elected there, but above all, guides for the
transition process and thus opinion did not choose those who seemed weak before
the military or too radical to ensure the peace.
Two plebiscites and two elections gave the Uruguayan transition solid
political and moral legitimacy. The experience serves to suggest that this
road, difficult and even dangerous, if used as an opportunity can turn out
successful for a system's consolidation.
THE WORLD IN WHICH WE LIVEA man of his time is a man for all
seasons.
JOHANN W. GOETHE
THE TRANSITIONS of the Eighties developed in an international climate
propitious to the democratization that advanced, in the same manner in which,
inversely, the coups of State around the Sixties and the years of the Seventies
stimulated each other, in a domino effect wherein the pieces kept falling one
after another.
There can be no doubt that this international context had a favorable
influence, even psychologically. From that, however, one cannot derive a sort
of mechanical action in which the outcomes become inevitable. Just as many
coups of State could have been avoided, also many democratic emergences were
delayed--or impeded--by exclusively internal circumstances, which definitely
are the essential ones.
The human rights politics of president Jimmy Carter doubtless contributed
in a favorable way. At times it produced confrontations with the military
governments, losing the capacity for dialogue, or suffered from an ingenuous
execution, that at times confused Marxist guerrillas with democrats and
conservative politicians with militarists. However, no one could doubt that his
healthy inspiration positioned the United States in a scenario where its
political authority was strongest and which encouraged those who struggled to
rediscover the system of liberties. An example of this is the case of Uruguay
in August of 1977, when his ambassador Terence Todman visited Montevideo. His
visit--in a very isolated country--produced an enormous impact. It was
applauded in the streets, which had not occurred with an American leader in
years, and provoked from the government some definition of the chronology of
the political exit. The latter had been spoken of for some time, and certainly
was not then made public, yet the fact is it allowed a positive response to be
presented to the government of the United States. This chronology was that
which set November 1980 as the date for the constitutional plebiscite (which
effectively was done) and 1981 for the national elections (later postponed due
to the rejection of the constitutional project).
Another illustrative episode was the visit of the king of Spain in May of
1983. We were on the verge of beginning a round of conversations with the
military. We spoke but--as with so many things during that time--nothing was
finalized. The occasion of the visit precipitated the initiation of dialogue,
with the goal of showing the international community how something was already
developing. What is important is that the royal presence was taken by the
public as an affirmative act of the democracy and not the inverse, of support
for the government, however much the latter may have wanted to capitalize it in
its favor. Every word of the monarch about democracy, every gesture of this
nature, produced an impact that extended like an electrical wave. The
culminating point was an interview granted in the Spanish Embassy to the
supreme Uruguayan political directorate, including those whose rights still
were proscribed. A crowd of several thousand people pounded on the door of the
embassy acclaiming the king and democracy.
These episodes make evident that, to open up a regime, there is nothing
more effective, pardon the redundancy, than opening it. When they are closed
off, breaking diplomatic relations or blockading them, they consolidate. First,
because that permits the regime to wrap itself in the nationalist flag of being
attacked from outside and second because the isolation debilitates those who
are far from power and have no medium to express themselves or instruments
which would allow them to inspire the citizenry and at least announce to them
their existence.
This tactical option was often discussed among the democratic political
leadership in Latin America. Radical temperaments, accustomed to collision, put
forth solutions of confrontation. The other thesis was always shown more
effective: what is important is that the influence of the friendly nation
manifests itself, and that requires dialogue and diplomatic contact. A
resounding example: the visit of the Pope to Poland in 1979, indubitable
beginning of the thawing process that will lead in ten years to the explosive
fall of the communist regimes.
Just as the international factor should be valued, it should not be
overvalued; it is a help if internally there exists a viable political project
of ideas and forces, and if not, is innocuous.
With transition underway, good conduct of international relations becomes
of ever greater political value. The creation of a generalized climate of
support nurtures the recently born systems and, by contraposition, discourages
nostalgic recidivism. The extent that the transmissions of command have had in
Latin America in recent years--a fact without precedent for the presence of
numerous chiefs of State and councilors--offered an interesting mode of
support. It is the opportunity, furthermore, for many statesmen with
experience to provide the actors in play with clear testimony as to the
viability of the road undertaken.
Along the economic dimension, so fundamental--above all in destabilizing--
an adequate international comprehension has unfortunately not existed. The new
democratic governments of Latin America had to debate in the midst of
harassment from an external debt that robbed their sleep. It is true that many
treated it in an arguable or clearly negative manner, but it also is true that
very little support came from abroad. The Baker Plan was a well-conceived plan,
as is the actual Brady Plan. But one or another never passed beyond the
condition of good initiatives to become true plans, with adequate objectives
and provision of the means necessary to reach them.
The Cartagena group fought boldly to create a climate favorable to an
unconventional solution. And there is no doubt that they kept achieving
improvements in refinancing procedures or in reduction of the debt. But those
were insufficient for the theme not to be the principal protagonist in the
scenario.
The same can be said of the protectionism of the industrialized nations,
which distorts international prices and impedes those countries, indebted and
full of problems, from finding the conditions of stability that nourish
investment. At Punta del Este the Uruguay round of GATT (General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade) was launched in 1987 as an attempt--the first in history--to
disengage the protectionist net and offer to the world a perspective of a more
transparent market. Five years of incessant effort has gone by and the truth is
that even when advances are attained, no one thinks, at that level, that there
will be dramatic changes.
It is opportune to observe, in this respect, limitations that the
democratic governments of the developed world exhibit at the hour of making
decisions. The European nations, for example, recognize that their agricultural
politics is not rationally defensible; nevertheless, at the defining moment,
are paralyzed by the political pressure of farmers who are influential in the
elections.
The same occurs with the North American government, which is often
observed from afar as much more powerful than it is, confusing the magnitude of
the economy of the country with the slim margin for maneuver of a State always
in deficit. Its governments have been decidedly in favor of liberalizing
foreign trade since the time of Reagan, but such possibilities proved very weak
before the protectionist tendencies established in Congress, where only
exceptional figures view the world panorama while the majority, conditioned by
the direct interests of the statewide electorates, acts to serve them without
further discussion.
In a world that was emerging from bipolarity, and which began to distance
itself from it at the end of the decade, external circumstances were seen from
a totally novel perspective. The United States-Soviet Union conflict was
departing the scene to give way to a stage of cooperation. It ceased financing
and support for the Latin American guerrillas and produced a new closeness of
the United States to its hemisphere, especially because Europe, self-absorbed
in the perspective of its unity in 1992 and with the great surprise of the
events in the East, diminished its active presence in Latin America, after a
moment of renewal.
In this context, then, transitions took place--and take place--somewhat
orphaned. Foreign interests, which came to be very active in 1985, had
declined five years later.
The press itself, that for a time followed the happenings little less
than daily, now did not maintain the same reflex. It only pauses on some
economic catastrophe or some folkloric situation, easy to exploit. It should be
said that in journalism there was displayed a relatively low comprehension of
the nature of our political processes.
In the United States easy generalization was too common about a hemisphere
whose diversity was not perceived. At the same time, transitions were
approached from a very partial angle as a sort of cowboy movie conflict between
good (humanitarian organizations, fighters for human rights) and evil (the
military) beneath the expectant gaze of political leaders towards those who
alternately would locate in one or the other camp according to the conjunction
of forces seen in the episode of the moment. In general, one could (and can)
recognize factual honesty in the telling but a recurrent lack of focus in the
evaluation of those same deeds.
The European press on the other hand, more mature in its interpretation,
much more reflected (and reflects) the political orientation of the newspapers
themselves, filters that deform occurrences beneath their prism. The theme that
might interest a communist, socialist, Christian Democratic, or liberal
periodical is predictable in advance and thus also is then the journalistic
image. For this reason the European public could not understand how general
Pinochet could count a very important sector of opinion in his favor--as he
showed in the referendum and in the election--such had been the journalistic
caricature of his figure, that the fact appeared as truly unintelligible.
This journalistic phenomenon seems to us of summary importance, for in the
contemporary world, with so much intercommunication, public opinion is created
in turn from these at times fleeting, and in general overly simplified, images.
The contribution should not be forgotten that many European news agencies
have made in favor of better information. Also that of some columnists and
serious correspondents, especially in Spain and in France. Yet, taken together,
the balance, unfortunately, is in the red, writings beneath the sign of
partisanship or stereotype, frequently disparaging.
LEGACIES OF THE PASTForce passes but the hatreds
it engenders are permanent.
CHARLES MAURICE DE TALLEYRAND
A PERIOD OF de facto always presumes acts of violence, previous and
subsequent confrontations, restricted rights, inevitable arbitrariness.
Then, democracy finds open sores, wounds not scarred-over or at least extreme
sensibilities and prejudices.
When the democratic government was installed in Uruguay, on March 1st of
1985, there were some hundreds of political prisoners, including among them
terrorists often processed by the justice system before the coup of State,
others from later, and even communist leaders accused of mere militancy. In the
previous months the bulk of the detained had been liberated, yet those cases
remained, naturally the most difficult. The solution was a generous amnesty,
but the issue was not simple. It struck at the military, who felt defrauded in
their fight against terrorism, and annoyed a certain sector of public opinion
who could not accept the pardon of those who had used violence during the
democracy and which now complicated the relations of the government with the
Armed Forces.
At the other end, it was natural to encounter innumerable demands from
persons aggrieved by the years of dictatorship. The families of the imprisoned
or victims of the repression, functionaries removed from office (which in
Uruguay numbered thousands), the understandable rebelliousness produced--
especially among youth--by the actual moment of authorization, the political or
union directors with their rights restricted for years and banned from
participating, the constantly threatened journalists, comprised a dangerous
emotional charge.
The "revealing," as it was called in Spain, thus contains ingredients not
the normal ones. A dog is beside itself when it is released from its chain; it
runs and barks as it normally would not. A stifled society also falls into
extreme tonalities. It does not sing of reconquered liberty, it shouts it; it
not only validates the re-acquired rights, but wishes to exercise them all at
once, hurriedly inaugurate them, place them into effect with haste.
Thus a bad characteristic of those times is born: "alreadyism." Everything
is wanted "today." Every right "already." "Already" all the social demands. In
Brazil it was "already direct elections." In Uruguay it was "amnesty already,"
"pay increases already."
It is very difficult to manage that climate of urgencies, because they
usually are logical. There is a desire to reconquer the lost age. The years of
clandestine or surreptitious opposition have generated a revolutionary
romanticism difficult to harmonize with the norms and the matrix of a state of
rights that is emerging within a de facto situation with all the
lessons which should be learned from the past. Those postponed demands,
although being valid, from then on are instilled with an impatience that is
bothersome to moderate. It is impossible to rein in their movement, given its
basic legitimacy. One attempts to cauterize it so that the current does not
overflow the levees and lead to a setback.
To these political elements one must add in the economic and the social.
To start with, the democratization of the Eighties years was carried out
in the midst of the crisis of external debt. The destabilizing potential of
that needs no underlining. The radicalization deriving from the years of the
dictatorship led many to want to reject the debt, as something illegitimate, as
little valid as the de facto governments themselves. The movements
denouncing the debt became generalized, to the point of even including the
governments themselves, as occurred in Peru under the presidency of Alan
García or in Brazil under president Sarney who, without perhaps
repudiating the obligation, decreed a moratorium on the service payments.
Even without considering such drastic solutions, the difficulty is evident
of any government carrying out adjustment programs designed to correct
macroeconomic imbalances, with the omission of attending to the payment of
interest. "We will not pay the external debt with the hunger of our people" was
a phrase repeatedly heard even from the more moderate governments, caught
between the pliers of the needs for austerity and attending to the claims.
The social demands are very strong and stem from salary postponements
possible within an authoritarian context, yet difficult if not impossible to
administer in the context of a democratic "revealing."
In the case of Uruguay, the situation was dressed in truly dramatic
fashion. A diagnosis was solicited from CEPAL (Economic Commission for Latin
America) that was genuinely alarming. The technical accent was placed on
economic reactivation as the only way of dealing with such a degraded social
situation. Among other things, they wrote that:
During the triennial 1982-1984 the gross national product fell by 15%,
bringing a reduction of almost 18% in per capita production over
that period. In 1982 external debt thus rose with extraordinary intensity.
Nevertheless, during the following years it increased much less, having
accumulated by the end of 1984 along the order of 4.600 million dollars, a
figure equivalent to 3.5 times the value of exports of goods and services.
At the same time inflation accelerated rapidly, whose rate of around 66%
at the end of 1984 more than tripled that recorded in 1982. Under these
circumstances the social situation deteriorated in dramatic form: real
salaries fell approximately 30% in the last three years, whereas the
official rate of unemployment in Montevideo rose from the minimum level of
6% recorded at the beginning of 1981 to an average of more than 15% in
1983 and around 14% in 1984... In these circumstances is seems evident
that reactivation of the economy should comprise an essential element of
any politics of adjustment. In effect, the recession has not only markedly
deteriorated the social indicators of the country but also, if it
persists, will become a critical obstacle to the fulfillment of the
nation's external commitments and, what is most important, for the
consolidation of the democratic regime. In sum, reactivation constitutes
an imperative as much for strictly economic reasons as for social and
political motives.
The activity of the cited factors was privileged then, relegating away other
possible priorities that in the abstract might be principles or which, in a
different context, might have merited that designation. Thus a level of growth
was being reached that allowed the transition process to be sustained.
To the fall of the gross national product was added a looming banking
crisis. With the exception of the foreign banks, private banking had reached
the point of cessation of payments. It was essential to win time so that this
situation could recover and the State confront the crisis without risks for the
stability of the whole.
From this angle, the Uruguayan situation resembled the Argentine, while
the Brazilian was distinguished because even if inflation was elevated and
important economic imbalances existed, the strong pace of growth compensated
for the notes of social alarm. The situation of Chile in transition has been
and is altogether different, to the point where the democratic government from
the first moment tried to bring tranquility to the scene by assuring continuity
of the basic politics; nevertheless, the social demands have caused it to feel
the result of postponement.
It seems inevitable, after the years of conflict, to receive a heavy
legacy of a complex nature. A routine situation does not pertain, nor does it
allow a routine treatment.
THE ECONOMY AS RISKBetween the implacable logic of social
control and the wild liberty of profit, what
is essential in social life consists of
relations among the actors and only the
combination of their hopes and from their
struggles can that which we call development
be produced, that is to say, a stronger
capacity by the society for action upon
itself and consequently, at the same time,
economic success and wider social and
political participation.
ALAIN TOURAINE
A PICTURE of an economic situation like what would be depicted of Uruguay
reveals, photographically, the risk that decontrol of the economy poses for
democracy. For Argentina in those same years the persistence of the
disequilibria signalled the source of innumerable problems and one can affirm
that it was principally those which necessitated the awaited transfer of power
from doctor Alfonsín to doctor Menem, just as he, during his first year,
had to confront a very severe crisis of the failure of its primary stabilizing
measures.
The challenge is to reconcile the possibilities with the expectations, and
this charges the political debate with ideological elements that resist
rational handling. This leads at times to erratic political economy, to
processes of economic confrontation, or perhaps to social outbursts of
perturbing consequences for the whole of society. Thus are political
agreements weakened until they are diluted, for the opposing parties who
collaborate with the government feel timid about confronting a critical and
even inflamed public opinion.
In those cases it is indispensable to perform the modifications that
overcome the economic imbalances, but the political and social variables cannot
be deprecated. Numerous technically well-conceived programs became politically
unviable by not taking into account in advance that dimension of the issue. It
is the natural methodological correspondence with an economic phenomenon whose
consequences are projected upon the whole of the society, overflowing its
original bounds.
In the Uruguayan instance, we had these considerations very much in mind.
We acceded to administration after a strong fall of the gross domestic product,
the employment level and real wages; to try an adjustment without growth could
lead us to a socially explosive situation and thereby, to political
instability.
This affirmation led us by the hand to consider that a single mode of
adjustment does not exist. Orthodoxy may call for an internal adjustment,
whereby one tries to eliminate the imbalance of an excess of domestic demand
with the consequent inflationary pressure, or perhaps for external adjustment,
that attempts to eliminate the imbalance of excess external demand with the
subsequent deficit in the current account of the balance of payments. None of
these objectives can be ignored in a program of adjustment, yet it also is true
that one can vary them with methods linked to production or to distribution.
The International Monetary Fund itself, implacably orthodox until a few years
ago, has loosened its criteria and accepts programs that include possibilities
for economic growth and wage improvement.
Another very important conclusion that the experience offers is the
inevitability of such adjustments. When one suffers from macroeconomic
imbalances she should not postpone adjustment for political reasons. To delay
is always to deepen the profundity of the measures that should in any case be
adopted, as well as to run the risk that the pathway could undergo a breakdown
of the situation. In this case, then, the adjustment still occurs, but instead
of being caused by the authorities it is projected in the facts in at times
savage ways, with steep wage falls or declines in demand which could have been
moderated.
In Latin America these postponements have been tragic, just like unreal
transformational politics, generators of terrific imbalances and original
source of much of the external debt, as occurred in the cases of Uruguay,
Argentina and Chile in the years 1978 to 1982.
It is possible to think, as a result, of adjustments with growth. Those
oblige putting the nation in question on the path to structural reforms that
attack the deep root of the disequilibrium. It will be essential, almost
always, to augment the yield on investment, accomplish a realistic
transformational politics that adapts to the goal of a more open economy, to
diminish the weight of the State, and adequately administer the external debt.
In the same manner, it is necessary to achieve a better allocation of resources
through a more transparent functioning of the market, to overcome dependencies
upon one or two export products, eliminate barriers to foreign payments or to
imports, rigid procedures for controlling prices or in general the inadequate
use of State resources.
With the panorama described, the Uruguay of 1985 faced an adjustment
program in which economic revival, such as that proposed by CEPAL, comprised
the nucleus. The lowering of inflation was defined as an objective to be
reached through a gradualist treatment. The hypothesis of a shock was
discarded given the political context of the transition, the real social
deterioration and the flowering--after years of imposed silence--of syndicalist
activity. It was reasonable to think that in a picture of this nature an
economic shock, instead of producing confidence in the government's
determination, would lead to a climate of negative agitation concerning an open
system, which had to overcome the prejudice--dragged in from before and
profusely diffused throughout the years of dictatorship--of a lack of order
pertaining to a regime of liberties.
The cornerstone of the program was fiscal adjustment. The deficit, which
in 1982 had attained the astronomical figure of 18 percent of the gross
domestic product had descended to 9.5 percent, yet this level was still
incompatible with the need for stability. The problem was that the decline of
that numeral--although so large--had been achieved through a drastic reduction
in productive activity and the wage level.
First, then, was fiscal adjustment, begun via imposition of tariffs on
public services, so as to reach not only equilibrium but new resources. Some tax
rates were incremented, fiscal drains were eliminated and, applying great
discipline in State expenditures, the deficit was reduced by half; the
remainder was financed with a policy of long-term indebtedness to the
international organizations and the offering of public titles which the market
absorbed in the midst of a climate sustained by generalized confidence. Thus
the inflationary tendency could return over more than three years, and if
indeed it later returned to rising--due to very clear conjunctural factors--
nothing collapsed in the confusion.
The agreement obtained with the International Monetary Fund for 18 months
allowed meeting the five trimester goals, something not altogether frequent in
the life of the organism, more accustomed with having to confront the usual
lack of fulfillment.
Additionally, the fight against the fiscal deficit had to be made
compatible with the principal theme of economic reactivation. For this exports
were privileged, preserving the positive aspects of the previous situation
(free markets, imports and movement of capital, et cetera) and specific
stimulus measures were adopted. Exports were prepaid, direct refunds of taxes
to those who needed them were effected, and the exporting sectors were given
priority, as much in the import of equipment as in the capitalizations of
external debt. Likewise, the regimen was intensified on a temporary basis so
that the exporting industry could attain competitive pricing, dictating a
modern law of franking zones and, fundamentally, markets were opened or
financed through an aggressive politics of international projection.
This commercial action of the State was a magnificent example of
cooperation between the public and private sectors. Bilateral conventions were
realized regarding commercial expansion with Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and
mainland China, the latter with whom diplomatic relations were established for
the first time and who signed important trade agreements.
Presidential and ministerial travel was exploited so that the private
sectors might access contacts at a high level, in general turning the entire
diplomatic activity of the nation to support of the exporting sector.
The results were good. In the years between 1984 and 1989 total foreign
trade moved from 1.560 million dollars to 2.750, or that is an increment of
more than 76 percent. Exports passed from .925 million in 1984 to 1.540 in
1989, which shows an advance of 66%, superior to the growth of world exports
during this period. Exports also indirectly benefited from a reduction of the
maximum tariff on imports, which moved from 55% to 40%.
In this manner external adjustment could be accompanied by productive
growth, which simultaneously improved the allocation of resources with major
external opening.
In parallel, the external debt was manipulated so that it would cease to
be a crisis factor, even while it continued to weigh heavily. Before the
initial impossibility of covering its service, all possible hypotheses of
confrontation with the international financial system were discarded: a country
immersed in an effort to export and open to world commerce could not support
such a project through the path of isolation. Those who followed this other
road paid for it dearly and those who without arriving at moratoria prolonged
the refinancing based upon hope of improvement also paid through financial
strangulation and lack of confidence. Thus even before the new government was
well installed it immediately confronted a refinancing. In July of 1986 the
first accord was reached which, for the time, was considered excellent, running
the gamut of amortization, extending the grace period and lowering interest.
In the first trimester of 1988 a new agreement was realized that served to
substantively improve conditions, and in 1989, with the Brady Plan launched,
Uruguay immediately commenced having a conversation with the banks which was
left very advanced for the new administration.
Despite the burden of the servicing, through this politics a very
important factor of confidence was introduced into the scene. If experience
reveals anything it is precisely the enormous value of that psychological
ingredient, perhaps difficult to quantify yet determinant of the nation's
credit.
Additionally, in such difficult times, in which the economic policies in
themselves cannot be too popular, it is fundamental that they at least be
trustworthy, credible and, in this way, supportive of growth as well as
democratic stability.
In Uruguay another phenomenon of vast proportions had to be faced: an
enormous banking crisis in the private sector. The banks in question
(Comercial, Caja Obrera, Pan de Azúcar, and Italia) maintained a very
illiquid portfolio since the exchange crisis that in November of 1982 destroyed
the famous "little table" which predetermined the value of the dollar. To that
was added an endemic elevated cost of administration which brought them into
negative profitability.
When we took charge of the government we had very exact information
concerning that situation and it truly worried us, perhaps nothing worried us
more during that time that we now see as distant. Banking crises come from
those economic phenomena--such as confidence--difficult to quantify, yet of
enormous repercussion. In an open financial market like ours, with a volume of
non-resident deposits greater than the country's exports, a generalized
bankruptcy can be of devastating effect. That repercussion begins as economic,
but ends being political. Few social sectors are more irate than a group of
bank depositors with their savings compromised; aroused, they have no limits,
and the history of modern revolutions testifies to this.
There unfolded then a politics of rescue that progressively gave to the
Bank of the Republic the management of those banks, passing later to property
of the Corporation for Development with the goal of being sold.
During the electoral campaign of 1984, the possible nationalization of
banking had been a theme of the debate. Today, from a distance, something
anachronistic is seen, after the crisis of the nations of the East, yet in
those years of reopening, during which everything seemed to reformulate, it was
a controversial issue. The Marxist sectors defended the nationalizations line
and sinker, and the majority of the National Party spoke of nationalizing
savings and especially banking. Our thesis then was the classical one, or that
is of maintaining an open system, with broad competition between the official
bank, the national and the foreign account. When we came upon the crisis, in a
way we opposed introducing the State and putting it in charge of the situation.
We felt the contradiction theoretically, however. It could temporarily assume
the direction of those banks, preserving their private nature. Undoubtedly the
measure had a cost for the State, for the losses it had to assume, yet these
were minimal compared to what the payment of deposits to foreigners would have
meant, indemnification for the dismissal of personnel--with the consequent
social confrontation--and a loss of credibility in the system which would
project for years. Certainly, many people did not accept--nor accept--these
reasons. Since the crisis was avoided, no one can perceive its real magnitude,
and it becomes easier to reason considering the concrete losses that were
produced without mentioning the enormous--yet invaluable--changes that had been
produced upon the collection of the body politic.
The World Bank itself initially was not persuaded of our politics.. After
examining the situation, nevertheless, it arrived at the technical conclusion
that there was no better road and granted a very important loan to reform those
institutions.
Despite the banking crisis and the weight of the external debt, the basic
objectives of the political economy were attained. In five years, the gross
domestic product grew by 16%. Exports also increased. Unemployment fell from
14% to approximately 8%. Real wages increased by 30% compared to 1984, with
higher percentages in private activity, where the terms were negotiated among
the parties and the State assumed a supportive and not decision-making role.
Improvements in taxation of the working and passive sectors, designed to
solve difficult situations and avoid confrontations, joined in the rate of
inflationary reduction. In all forms, it was possible to achieve important
stability in the inflation rate, which monthly varied over the five years from
a minimum of 3.8% (1987) and a maximum of 5.5% (1989), which gave the economy
great predictability, avoiding pronounced variations in real interest rates.
Naturally, an adjustment with these characteristics is very difficult to
administer. Much more than a classical one, which with drastic effect although
a simple policy, requires less development over time and less effort in the
painful vigilance over public spending. The sacrifice had, nevertheless, the
compensation of having been able to again take up the pathway of growth and
improve the social indicators in a substantial manner.
During the Eighties the economy was an eagle's talon in the Latin American
situation. Except for Chile, Colombia and Uruguay, there are no nations with a
favorable evolution. Without doubt this situation was very influential in the
deterioration of the military governments, hastening their democratic exit, but
at the same time it saddled the advent of democracy with a heavy burden. The
above affirmation should not lead to a widely dispersed error that attributes
to the external debt crisis a democratizing effect. That the situation degraded
the dictatorships there is no doubt; however, that mechanical effect cannot be
seen in the case of Chile where, conversely, full dynamic expansion produces
the democratic opening.
The fact is that the majority of the decade's governments have lived in
anguish by an economic situation plagued by critical moments, suffering a
strong deterioration in public opinion and growth of institutional instability.
It thus becomes invaluable to care for economic stability, which is not to
say, in Latin American terms, hard money and inflation; it means
predictability. Living without surprises. There will be good moments and bad,
but the question is to be able to avoid the unexpected avalanches.
To reconcile the economy with the needs of institutional transformation is
the substantive part of the challenge that this implies. In their analysis the
economists usually deprecate or relegate away the political or social factor.
The politicians, for their part, are opposed to tying themselves to the rigors
of a cautious administration, with limitations in expenditures and without
concessions to popularity. That equilibrium must be achieved, both visions
placated, to discover a politics which balances one necessity and the other. It
is always painful, yet inevitable. The voluntarist myth, resting on faith in
the planning State, has foundered not only in the asphyxiating Marxist efforts,
but even in its democratic versions. Today we suffer from the countermyth
created by a conservative neo-anarchism that practically wishes for the State
to
evaporate, when the world shows us that even the most open economies do not
renounce certain margins of protection and the careful management of some
variables such as the monetary.
A humanity every day more worried about the environment, by the scarcity
of water and oil and by the devastating effects of drug use, will reclaim a
distinct presence for the State. The public Benefactor shall now be above all
a Guarantor, a bondsman alert to the balances between humanity and nature and
among men.
PEACE, A POLITICAL PROJECTEveryone excluded becomes an enemy.
MATEO LÓPEZ BRAVO
Mayor of Casa y Corte
ONE MORNING in May of 1985 I called Wilson Ferreira Aldunate, leader of the
opposition, and invited him to visit me at six in the evening at the Government
House. I received him in the small salon that then was the president's working
study. Only two and a half months had passed since the start of the government
and the tensions began to appear, beginning with an infantile syndicalist
incomprehension. We spoke, as always, in disorderly frankness. It was difficult
to converse in any other way with my brilliant interlocutor, who at all times
spoke in ingenious phrases and jumped from issue to issue carried by his words.
When I noticed it was the appointed hour I said point blank:
--They tell me that the commander in chief, lieutenant general Medina, is
at home. Are you against talking with him?
--No--he said rapidly, despite the surprise.
In truth, that was mutual, because neither one of them had been alerted of
this possibility. At that height, it seemed indispensable to me to launch a
mission of unfreezing between the persons themselves. The military continued
intact in their distrust and lack of confidence towards Ferreira Aldunate. And
he, his prejudices against the military, whom he pricked with darts at a
seminary in Madrid (More than once I had said to Ferreira that no one could
aspire to the Presidency alienated from the Armed Forces of his country, whom
he would have to command).
He hardly responded to me, took up the telephone and asked the chief of
the Military House, general Guillermo de Nava, to be present with the commander
in chief. He became serious, as is his style, and did not extend his hand until
Ferreira would do so, who advanced and greeted him with his habitual smile. He
immediately confronted him and said:
--Do you hate me very much, General?
--Not too much, Medina laconically responded.
--That is already something--I said, and invited them to sit down. They
did so together on a sofa, before which, on two chairs, we sat with general de
Nava. He, looking at me but in a loud voice, said:
--Has the President seen how some leave him and then rejoin him? There is
no doubt that the whites are always the whites...
--That about the whites only more or less, because you (and I looked at
Medina) already sinned once. And you sinned with that little hand (said
Ferreira as he performed the gesture of putting a ballot in a box).
--I do not know to what you are referring--said Medina.
--You know--Wilson replied... You know that you voted with the colors
party...
--No sir, I voted only for the peace of the nation--the general replied.
The conversation later followed fluidly. A dialogue then began that kept
growing in intensity and ended in a mutual respect, one could say even a
personal friendship.
This episode, small yet revelatory, situates us in the crux of the process
of national reconciliation, without which no peace is possible. If the people
do not stop seeing their fellow citizen as an enemy in spite of disagreeing, if
one does not take account of that, despite different criteria, they can
converse and even find understanding on certain matters, there is no way to
construct anything true. For that peace must give credit to a political program
from which no aspect can remain outside without risk.
One usually alludes to peace as abstention from violence. Thus, simply
because there is no war there will be peace. In classical polemical terms one
can accept the concept. But it nevertheless is not valid in political analysis,
because peace assumes a balance of forces, institutional solidity and, above
all, a spiritual state that permits the full exercise of democratic life. We
cannot speak of peace seated upon tensions that are hidden unless a spark
appears or when we actively maintain all the circumstances of a past conflict.
There would be a "cold war," like the scenario of modern strategy, all the cold
that is desired, yet war without end; or, at least a non-peace.
These concepts become singularly valid when we situate ourselves in the
spatial and social domain of a single nation, when we think of a particular
type of conflict which is civil war, or that is the violent, bloody
confrontation between organized groups within a single State.
Institutional transition assumes a movement from a de facto
situation to a state of rights. The situation that it leaves behind is
ontologically abnormal. It could have begin by a coup of State within a
democracy, or be one more phase in a long process of dictatorship, or might
occasionally be the result of a specific conflict, but the fact is that we deal
precisely with overcoming an abnormal situation. Abnormal in relation to what?
To a stable democratic organization whose restoration is desired, in the case
of those nations who experienced the fullness of the system, or perhaps in
relation to an ideal democracy largely treasured as a hope for that which it
has been unable to attain.
In every transition these elements of tension deriving from the past are
given. The nominal groups in the conflict are present in social life and the
nucleus itself of that conflict usually is present too; only the
circumstantial element will then be missing which will unravel it again. We
have here the challenge for the man of the State.
To attain peace, the return to normality, assume demobilizing the groups,
and this is only possible by resolving the terms of the conflict. At the same
time, one wants to surmount that new version of the conflict, which presents
itself as the sequels to the old confrontation. Habitually these are more
visible than the other, but in the long run their common origin in the
situation begins to be lost.
So then, in the Uruguay of 1985, what was the panorama?
The two traditional parties had been in the opposition. Both included
groups that had collaborated with the military government, but their weight had
diminished in recent years.
In the National Party there predominated the group headed by Wilson
Ferreira Aldunate, a tenacious opponent who had gone into exile at the time of
the State coup and who maintained a strong militancy abroad. For the military
he was the most characteristic personalized enemy. He had not even supported
the Naval Club Pact, which opened the way to elections, such that his attitude
was radically hostile to the military forces.
In the Colors Party "batllismo" predominated, which had obtained the great
majority in the internal election of 1982, relegating the nearest groups to the
regime of the past. It was also an oppositional current, yet had assumed
greater responsibility in the search for agreement concerning the institutional
exit. This attitude had been recognized by the citizenry, who gave a majority
to the presidential team Sanguinetti-Tarigo, a duality symbolically
representative of the Naval Club Pact.
The Wilsonists accused us of "gradualism" for our moderate style and, at
the same time, we accused them of rebellion without a cause, which risked
subjecting the country to another disaster...
The Broad Front, coalition of the forces of the left, with Marxism
predominant, had joined in the Naval Club accord, where they managed to
overcome their political proscription, but they presented a frankly averse
attitude towards the armed forces. Of heterogeneous composition, their
ideological spectrum included moderate Christian Democratic or social
democratic groups who co-existed with a very orthodox Marxist majority, who
offered communists of a Stalinist root, Leninist socialists and even
Trotskyists. Their leader, the general Líber Seregni, despite having
suffered eight years in prison, had assumed, since liberation, a pacifying
attitude. If Seregni had joined with the radical activity of the National Party
it would have been politically almost inviable for us, with only the Colors
Party, to have come out ahead. Nevertheless, it was a different moment:
democracy had been re-established, liberties were being used, the Broad Front
claimed important parliamentary representation and beat in the hearts of the
men and political tendencies most abused by the military government. The
communists had been prohibited until the election of 1984 itself, which they
likewise joined beneath the banner of "Advanced Democracy" and with fresh
candidates who helped them offer a better image, a renewal of the Stalinist old
guard. For its part, the Tupamaros, whose position was undisguisedly
"revanchist" against the military forces, and if they did not integrate
formally into the Broad Front, they decisively influenced it with their
activism. Their publications comprise, up to now, a document roundly expressive
of the paralysis of the time.
For their part, the military forces, who had arrived in good faith at the
institutional exit, began to feel worry. They saw the attacks grow, sometimes
generic, sometimes personalized to specific officials, who they saddled with
responsibility. If they did not impugn the good faith of the government that
was starting, they doubted, alternatively, its possibilities for directing the
situation. They feared that disorder could arise and that parliamentary
majorities were not enough to find the legislatively indispensable solutions.
Obviously military nostalgists were also upset, who never desired the exit or
who only accepted it complainingly; now they returned to the charges, laying
responsibility on those who had taken the step without the necessary
guarantees.
To reach calm between all these existing forces is not an easy task. To it
we turned with determination, feeling that the nucleus of the transition was
there. If we could demobilize spirits, if we succeeded in moving away from the
implacable logic of confrontation, we would open up years of peace; on the
contrary, if we were to fall again or the nation were to live under an anxiety
that corrodes democracy or severely worsens an economic situation which above
all demanded tranquility.
Uruguay obtained that result and thereby reached, after five years, the
election of 1989 in a climate of total peace, without threats nor tumult.
Furthermore, the opposition, the National Party, triumphed and the Broad Front
won the administration of Montevideo, without anyone feeling at all nervous.
The passage of presidential command arrived without the most minimal change in
the exchange market or in the national climate, the celebrations being
developed with high civic style.
The greatest evidence that the nation truly came to pacify itself lies in
that, cohabiting in the same city were the Tupamaro leaders header by Raúl
Sendic, Fernández Huidobro and others, and the military leaders like the
last president, lieutenant general Álvarez, yet no violent episodes were
registered. Not one attempt nor a stone through a window. This reflects how the
public itself embodied the project of peace. The government could have put in
place measures directed towards that objective; the Legislative Power could
have dictated the laws it thought pertained, but if the people themselves had
not been pacified, the result here would not have been reached. Inversely, it
is unimaginable that the people would really accept the project of peace if
they had not seen a clear and honest attitude in the public officials;
everything arguable as it may be, since there are not revealed truths in this
respect, yet clear and honest.
The first government measure was, then, the general amnesty for all the
political--those with political motives or offenses connected with political
activity--prisoners. The amnesty even included those who had left the country
and had never been jailed, despite having committed blood offenses during the
time of the apogee of Uruguayan terrorism, before the State coup of 1973.
Naturally, this measure was not simple. In the political directorate it
obtained wide support and on March 8th of 1985, less than a month since the
installation of the new Parliament and eight days after taking possession of
the government, it was adopted by an overwhelming majority. A strong campaign
in favor of a "general and unconditional amnesty, now!" created the proper
climate. The mobilization of the forces of the political left and of the trade
unions was vigorous and vast sectors of the traditional parties accompanied
them. There was doubt as to whether the amnesty should be general or except
blood crimes, especially when one dealt with those who had never been tried or
when one had the certainty that the judgments had been normal, as occurred in
the case of many Tupamaros imprisoned before the State coup. Personally, I
myself was a partisan of that criterion at the beginning.
Facts, nevertheless, caused us to evolve in our position. It was clearly
seen that to keep a nucleus of prisoners was to keep alive a focus of
irritation, a banner for possible agitation. Demonstrations at the portal of
the jail were predictable, with the possible risks of incidents and--what is
worse--the sensation of exclusion that one group of society might experience.
Their responsibility had been and was enormous, undoubtedly, for their violence
against democracy was what led to the destabilization, but located 15 years
from the episodes, after hard years in prison in the majority of the cases, the
country totally dedicated to a task of reconstruction, it was time to prefer
peace and bet that generosity would be the spark of tolerance.
This measure was immediately accompanied by other acts of reparation. A
very important one was that called the "law for restoring the dismissed," voted
the 25th of November of 1985, which provided norms for restoring to their
offices the functionaries who had been dismissed for political reasons, or
perhaps to recompose the administrative career of those whose rights of advance
had been impeded for the same reasons. The functionaries who were not in a
position to be restored had the right to recover their pensions as if they had
worked those years and evolved normally in their functional careers. Some
10,000 functionaries benefited from this law. Among them, 3,300 were within the
public teaching organisms. To them should be added the 6,000 persons who
reformed their pension arrangement.
This law, in its generous conception, is without precedent and called for
an enormous economic effort. We add to it the problem that the return of those
functionaries to the administration represented, for where vacancies had been
generated, a chain of promotions had filled them with functionaries who
naturally were not at fault for the situation.
As could be expected, there were protests on both sides. Some demanded
rapid restitutions at any price; others felt endangered by the democracy by
virtue of the reappearance of functionaries of a certain grade, reintroduced
above them in the hierarchies based upon seniority. Patiently, case by case,
progress was made, and in five years the conflict was overcome, leaving a
remainder of claims, among which the majority were fanciful (because,
obviously, the situation lent itself to the appearance of an industry of
victims of the dictatorship).
What is undeniable is that this measure brought tranquility to many
persons. It took the fuse out of a grenade of resentment that at any moment
could have exploded. Not everything was fair, of course. Many of those who had
been removed deserved to be, whether one dealt with persons who had brought
politics into the public function, or simply with bad functionaries whom the
de facto regime had fired using extraordinary powers, in place of
substantiating the corresponding charges, in which case there would have
existed conditions for proving the ineptitude or sin of those involved.
Other acts of reparation were carried out. No sooner had the government
been installed, three days after the assumption, than as president I shut down,
by order, the proceedings initiated by military justice against Wilson Ferreira
Aldunate, general Seregni and other political directors. Also by decree I
restored general Seregni to the military rank that the de facto
government had removed from him, after declaring him a traitor to the
institution for his adhesion to a Marxist strand considered incompatible with
military judgment. Certainly the disposition did not please the military
command, who respectfully expressed that to me, but I indicated to them that
there were insufficient military motives and on the other hand powerful
political motives for doing it: Seregni had been a prisoner for eight years for
no apparent cause and emerged from jail to promote peace and not to seek
hatred, despite belonging to a party where the most exalted rhetoric was used.
Also the expulsion from the country of numerous Uruguayan citizens and
foreigners was voided, and free entrance to the country was authorized for all
persons who had been affected for any type of offense connected with politics.
In the military domain, the legal norm was repealed that had authorized
the possibility of forced retirement, without the superior officials invoking
cause. The so-called regulation g had been the instrument for the
expulsion of numerous officials, especially in the Navy, where two thirds of
ship captains had been displaced for political reasons. In addition to the
repeal of this norm, the government attempted to symbolically repair the moral
damage to those in the military who had fallen due to their adhesion to the
democratic system. One of them, the most symbolic, was the case of the rear
admiral Juan J. Zorilla, who resisted the Navy command's attempted State coup
in February 1973 which preceded the actual one, and was later fired and
imprisoned. He accompanied us in the elections as a candidate for the Senate,
won his seat and later renounced it to accept the designation we gave him as
ambassador to the Holy See.
Another relevant measure was the constitution, in April of 1985, of the
National Commission for Repatriation, which attended to the situation of the
exiles who were returning to the nation after years of alienation. It was not
easy, since the majority were very radicalized persons in their day and who
returned with the mentality of the exile ghetto. We wanted them to feel that
the government was not distant from their situation and would help them in the
measure possible. Some 16,000 persons returned and in one way or another
received support. It dealt with facilitating transactions, access to housing or
important social benefits like attention to health. Also small investment
projects were carried forward to provide employment, or perhaps they obtained
scholarships in order to reinsert themselves into a labor market from which
they had been most excluded. The commission worked for five years, with the
support of the exterior ministries, and concluded its labor with generalized
recognition. There were some who individually could feel not completely
satisfied, yet in general, criticism was not heard and one is certain that many
persons who might have been overcome by despair re-entered society normally.
Meanwhile, the denunciations of the military became generalized. At the
beginning the democratic government was a predictable reality but without
effective concretization. Fear still weighed on many people and even if the
transition seemed to be starting well under good auspices in diverse sectors--
beyond left or right--a possible reversion was feared. In theory it was
certainly not a possibility, now that as the days passed the democratic
government gained strength and the impugners of the military forces also gained
animus.
I have been asked more than once why, when the amnesty for the Tupamaros
and political prisoners was decreed, the military were not included. The truth
is that the question did not then have the relevance which it later gained, nor
did there exist parliamentary votes in the political medium for a measure of
this nature. It is enough to recall the cost of arriving at that amnesty to
prove how difficult it was to propose that theme to a political class that,
after years of proscription and maltreatment, kept alive the fire of passion.
Nor at the military level was there unanimity in this respect, because if
indeed the commanded posited the possibility of a legal measure of this type
during conversations prior to the pact, many in the military rejected being
included in the same legal norm with those whom they had combatted in the name
of the State.
The fact is that the denunciations began to occur frequently, some true,
others shaky, all accompanied by a constant climate of attack on the Armed
Forces making it feel judged. The passion of many was explicable, but one could
not help but notice the spirit of revenge in others and, above all, the cheerful
political exploitation of many vote-hunters, conscious that they there found an
easy vein for a demagogic approach.
The tensions were building. Parliament mounted two investigatory
commissions, who could not manage to reach any proof, yet which served as a
launching platform for the publicity operation.
In August of 1986 I found myself making a visit to the State of Brazil,
accompanied by high officials of all the parties, among them the senator
Alberto Zumarán, who had been the highest voted National Party
presidential candidate, and general Seregni. During the flight, in the
Brazilian presidential airplane, news of Uruguay came to me. An episode had
occurred there the night before at the door of the Military Center on Agraciada
Avenue. A demonstration, convened by an irresponsible senator who had a radio
show with high impact among the militant left, had arrived at the door of the
Center demanding "judgment and punishment," a mission that for now defined this
group of hotheads. There were chants, shouts and some stones, but the episode
did not become greater, despite that a social reunion of an important nucleus
of cadets and officials was convening within.
There I had the clear sensation that there was no room for more delay. A
military reaction from a window would have been enough for us to have dead in
the street, and that was above any other consideration.
In the plane itself I gathered the leaders and told them that my point of
view was to propose a general amnesty to the nation, which would extend to the
military the same generosity given to the guerrillas. Senator Zumarán as
well as general Seregni expressed their doubts, although they understood my
proposition. Upon my return, I requested a television appearance and there
expounded to the nation the necessity for the amnesty, sending the proposal at
once to the Parliament.
Immediately, from the left, a chorus was lifted that began to tear its
clothes before the threat of "impunity." Few times have I felt, during my years
in government, so tranquil with my conscience. I was disposed to personally
take the responsibility and I so expressed it. I knew that if I came out ahead
I would save the nation from many new disgraces. And therefore I exerted all my
strength to attain this goal.
EXPIRATION AND REFERENDUM
We do not expect the men of the two parties,
blinded by their respective interests, to go
meekly to raising hands, the ones with the hope
of governing, the other out of fear of being
slaves. You can avoid this misfortune without
effort or expense, with no danger nor loss of
blood, by ordering by decree the mutual
forgetting of all injuries. If there are
culpable, now is not the moment to find them,
judge them or punish them. We are not dealing
today with a particular cause that requires you
to proceed with all the formalities of law, but
instead with ensuring a common interest, the
tranquility of all, a result that you will obtain
by shutting your eyes to certain errors.
MARCO TULIO CICERO
THE LAW OF EXPIRATION of the Punitive Reach of the State, a long and circuitous
name for an amnesty law, was the epicenter of debate on the transition. Around
it were discussed the attacks upon human rights in the past, in processes of
promotion, and with respect to the role that the Armed Forces should assume in
the renewed democracy.
Formally, the issue began with a project of the Executive Power--of August
28, 1986--that we transmitted when we noticed, as I already said, true risk in
the situation. Under the title of Law of Pacification amnesty was sought for
offenses committed during the period between January 1st of 1962 and the 1st of
March of 1985 by police or military in actions directly or indirectly linked
with the anti-subversive struggle.
The meetings held up to then had been unfruitful. The last attempt had
occurred a month previously, with the designation of a commission of jurists
from all the parties who with good will attempted to reconcile points of view,
yet whose conclusions did not turn out to be realistic.
Within the judicial domain time-periods were shortened. For over a year
forums of arbitration had been established between ordinary justice, excited
into action by the denunciations, and military justice, which demanded
jurisdiction to be authorized to review the alleged crimes committed by the
military in the fulfillment of their functions.
The Supreme Court of Justice finally ruled that the forums pertained to
Ordinary Justice, with which the issue entered the final stage: the calling of
the military to testify before the judged, with the subsequent journalistic
repercussions. Naturally there began to take shape the possibility of contempt
of court.
Our effort was incessant, trying to create awareness in the political
medium of the gravity of the situation, which had acquired an overt political
voltage. Everyone noticed it, yet one felt trapped by old declarations and no
one took one step backwards. Every day it was more clear that we were not
having a juridical debate nor even one on human rights. It was an institutional
situation which reached the heart of the transition in its essence. Could the
military be judged after having given amnesty to the terrorists? What if the
military refused to testify and the State, through its three branches, remained
impotent to complete its determinations? Regarding the military having
responsibility, were the military culpable who may have committed excesses or
their commanders who directed actions where excess is almost inevitable? The
military who got amnesty, were they thereby constituted into a caste immune to
the power of justice? And the recently recovered democratic institutions, would
they tend to return to the old confrontation that debilitated them?
Approximately 180 functionaries were accused in diverse denunciations. The
social clubs of the Armed Forces emitted pronouncements of solidarity with
those who appeared everyday in the most radicalized newspapers, now not like
the accused but instead practically as the condemned. The commander in chief of
the Army, for his part, declared himself responsible for the situation. Thus I
got to know lieutenant general Hugo Medina, a central figure in the military
situation and a key piece for the democratic exit. With him we had conducted
conversations ending in the Naval Club Pact, and I had ratified it as commander
in chief of the Army, in the conviction that he was a person of high moral
condition and a prestigious officer indispensable for facing this stage. He
felt intimately responsible for the situation of his comrades for having
fostered the democratic exit and, in consequence, was resolved to personally
assume its consequences.
The generals acted with great discipline and loyalty, trying to help me in
the search for a solution and maintaining a sacrificial silence. Nevertheless,
they themselves would tell me that their efforts could be sterile if there were
no political exit from what they felt as a campaign of denigration, launched by
the institution's old enemies and now supported by a political nucleus.
Disgracefully it was so, and the feeling legitimated one to think that the
relatives of the repression's victims now did not count.
On the 1st of December of 1986 I convened all the political leaders in a
meeting at the Government House. The commanders in chief were going to be there
to be interrogated by whoever wished to inform themselves concerning deeds,
opinions or possibilities. At this meeting I provided a very important
document: a declaration of the commanders in chief in which they said that the
Forces felt excluded from the national reconciliation and at the same time,
reiterated their support for the democratic institutions. They alluded also to
the excesses of the past and attributed them to "loss of reference points"
which led to a situation of conflict with disorder in a de facto
state. This document, of great rank, represented an assumption of
responsibility and carried the indisputable mark of good faith. The meeting had
the solemnity appropriate to a moment felt to be charged with dangers and
tensions. Ferreira Aldunate wielded all his perspicacity of an old
parliamentarian against general Seregni, trying to demonstrate that the Naval
Club Pact had granted a military amnesty and that the left had accepted this in
exchange for their reincorporation into political life. This was not so, for
the issue had been avoided but, as I then said and was recognized in the law
itself, "the logic of facts" led to that inevitable result. It was evident that
no one thought they agreed to the democratic transition with the military
thinking they would later be placed in the dock (a very different situation
from that of Argentina, where there was no such negotiation, since the defeat
in the Malvinas led to the overthrow of the regime and the political forces
took power abruptly). The amnesty for the Tupamaros being decreed, furthermore,
the inertia of facts was even more evident.
They were tense days. On the 22nd of December of 1986, finally, the Senate
approved a nationalist project for the expiration of the punitive authority of
the State, which substituted for that presented by the government. In the
Senate the vote was 22 out of 31 and among the Deputies 60 to 37. Clear
majorities. To attain this result the activity of Wilson Ferreira Aldunate was
fundamental. In his time he had challenged the possibility of an amnesty. He
had been against the Naval Club Pact. He even spent the election of 1984
imprisoned in a jail cell. For no one was it more difficult to accept an
amnesty. That explains the tortured legalisms he sought so as not to use that
word. All that was the form. The substance was what was important: he had
arrived at the conclusion that actually neither the president nor the commander
in chief were alarmists, but that the nation truly would experience a very
delicate institutional situation in the event the trials go forward. His
gesture won applause and challenges. What no one can historically deny is
greatness and patriotism.
In the focus with which the National Party came to propose this new
version of amnesty there was however an error of perspective: to reduce the
situation to possible contempt towards the judicial citations. At root this was
not the issue, because even were the military to testify, there would be
neither peace nor tranquility. An army excluded from the climate of
pacification, corralled, exposed to public scorn when its enemies--and those of
the institutions--become accusers, would be a caged and angry tiger.
There was an aspect that the military never came to face clearly: they
omitted from their analysis the fact of being responsible for a coup of State.
To restore the anti-subversive struggle was logical; also to insist that one
could not equate the official who defended the democratic system with the
guerrilla who brought violence to the country. Even to ask for a special
dispensation for possible excesses committed in the defensive action of the
State was legitimate, for whomever unleashes violence cannot ignore that it
will generate more violence. All these reasons, however, begin to diminish when
we enter the period of the coup of State. Democratic defense cannot be invoked
for the moment when the democratic institutions are trampled. Therefore the
turnover of power in a legitimate and negotiated form was fundamental so that
the Armed Forces could leave in the past that episode wherein it had fallen and
begin to reconstruct its image before national opinion, giving credibility to
its position.
With the law of expiration passed, the Tupamaros and other more radical
groups immediately launched the idea of gathering signatures for having the
recourse of a referendum against the law. This was embodied in a campaign
joining the forces of the Broad Front, an important segment of the National
Party, the central trade union, and some independent legislators. For the
duration of a year the collection of signatures proceeded. The propagandistic
campaign was massive, yet did not obtain the ten percent of the electoral body
necessary for the initiative. Upon the expiration of the period they presented
a mass of signatures which had to be reviewed in a long process. Finally, the
referendum was set for April 16th of 1989.
An enormous public relations campaign was carried out by the partisans of
the rejection. The State did not create propaganda, abstaining, in the same
manner that it had done before, during the long campaign of gathering
signatures.
The outcome was clear: 54 percent in favor of the ratification of the law.
On the same night, the members of the pro-referendum commission ratified the
pronouncement and declared the matter closed. No episode of violence marred
voting day or the previous campaign.
Everyone had had the opportunity to express themselves, on many occasions
even, with passion. The referendum acted like a great catharsis.
The transition ended there. The final problem pending from the times of
conflict had been settled, peacefully, by the citizenry itself. The nation now
turned its face to the national election, which six months later would elect a
new government, a new Parliament and new Departmental Administrators.
Democratic routine--sacred routine--resumed its proper inertia.
THE MORAL FOR TRANSITIONSWe must be clear about the fact that all
ethically oriented conduct may be guided by one of
two fundamentally differing and irreconcilably
opposed maxims: conduct can be oriented to an
'ethic of ultimate ends' or to an 'ethic of
responsibility.' This is not to say that an ethic
of ultimate ends is identical with irresponsibility,
or that an ethic of responsibility is identical
with unprincipled opportunism. Naturally nobody
says that. However, there is an abysmal contrast
between conduct that follows the maxim of an ethic
of ultimate ends--that is, in religious terms,
'The Christian does rightly and leaves the results
with the Lord'--and conduct that follows the maxim
of an ethic of responsibility, in which case one
has to give an account of the foreseeable results
of one's action.
MAX WEBER
WHAT SHOULD BE done with the past? Should one investigate and judge case by
case, punctually, speedily applying the justice proper to a democracy during
normal times, or should a great blanket of pardon, but not forgetfulness, cover
everything, to turn the nation towards the search for its present and the
cementing of its future.
Under the first option one runs the risk of anchoring the national debate
in the themes of the past and even of reproducing its conflicts, the old
passions and old confrontations revivified. Under the second, the danger is
wounding the natural sentiment of justice which demands judgment for every
crime and punishment for everyone culpable.
Reason should begin by considering that these crimes covering violations
of human rights or excesses in the exercise of the state powers of repression
are not individual crimes, but instead deal with deeds generated within a
situation of collective conflict. Ordinary penal law cannot be applied, because
it does not deal with a particular person or group of persons who commit a
crime within an existing social and judicial order; we stand before a
confrontation that involves the entire nation and not the result of someone's
sad action, but instead of a social force which transcends individuals and
dislocates the normative order to the detriment of the state of law. In some
cases one can speak of civil war, in others of guerrilla revolution, in others
of a coup of State. In whatever hypothesis, all the situations are de
facto and collective phenomena of a political nature: the intentionality
is political, its execution also.
Nor can we judge the situation in the name of the moral individual, who
disapproves of all acts of violence. We have to think in terms of the moral
collective, where other factors are in play that comprise the set of society.
The common good will appeal to Catholics, the general interest the liberals
will say, while the conservatives can denominate it public order. Yet beyond
qualifications and denominations, we deal with a collective value,
indispensable for organizing life in society and thus permitting each
individual or family existence to transpire in terms of stability and
indispensable peace. We cannot ignore that violence normally has not had a
single origin, but instead diverse challenged groups have had recourse to it.
Located upon that terrain, from there the possibility of amnesties is
born. Democratic constitutions always foresee those elements of sovereign
clemency (amnesty, pardon, grace) as instruments of pacification. This answers
the simplistic argument that no criminal episode or excess can remain in
impunity, subtracting from justice. If it were always and universally so these
constitutional provisions, established precisely to provide a political
solution to a political conflict, would not exist. Or does anyone believe that
a war can be subjected to legal examination and a judicial decision? It deals
with social confrontations, of a political nature, which can only be resolved,
in its consequences (now they are unavoidable) through the use of those extreme
measures.
These relationships between ethics and politics constitute one of the
phenomena of our times and are not small problems in an era of transition. On
one hand, the development of psychology and the economic boom have devalorized
ethical mediation, that now not even the religious practice much. On the other,
the "de-ideologization" of the world revalidates an ethical vision of politics,
to which the citizen can be introduced with very little baggage and in which,
confusing terms, the politicians themselves fall and fall again. They speak in
absolute terms, and do not distinguish well between a search oriented by the
great ethical principles and the different professional moralities, which
impose certain behaviors on individuals.
Here we enter another order of reasoning: these measures, although
political, cannot damage other principles in play such as equity. Hemiplegic
amnesties, which view one side of the situation, are not equitable. We have
seen things go this way, however, many times. In Uruguay itself we are
afflicted with it: during the democratic re-opening, rivers of ink in the
newspapers and paintings on the walls demanded a "general and unrestricted
amnesty now"; assuming it would be for the guerrillas and other political
prisoners, they began to negate the possibility that it would extend to the
military and police. Obviously this is an inequitable vision. One cannot pardon
the excesses of some and that of others not. If everything points towards the
search for national reconciliation, how could that be founded on such a
discriminatory basis?
In such cases in should be said that private violence is different from
the violence of the State. Some jurists maintain that one should consider that
if the armed struggle ineluctably provokes a response of the same nature on the
part of the authorities, only this form of State violence is admitted under
international law, excluding all forms of repression that resort to torture.
This is logical, but they add that violence is certainly practiced by the
parties to the conflict, while the torture and disappearances--to speak only of
these--are practiced in general, in a single camp and always the same one: the
side of the State. They conclude then that it is difficult--at least with
respect to inhumane practices in the sense accepted in international law, such
as torture or the involuntary or forced disappearances--to allow the notion of
"reciprocal amnesty" wherever reciprocity of situations does not exist.
The reasoning is based on a false premise: that usually only the State
practices disappearance, assassination or torture. In Uruguay the guerrillas
pronounced summary judgments and assassinated (calling them "executions"),
raped, kidnapped and imprisoned people, who miraculously preserved their lives
or mental health, buried in sordid burrows beneath the earth, without light and
almost without air, in what were called the "people's jails." A doctor even
came to eliminate a miserable agricultural peasant with an injection of
Pentothal for the sole crime of having discovered the Tupamaros, without even
knowing who they were, in one of their rural hideouts.
And so reciprocity existed, and it was not only an exclusively juridical
phenomenon but also moral. Another very important consideration must be added:
it is not the same to assail as to defend oneself. Defense, although violent,
can be legitimate if it is a response equivalent to the aggression that is
suffered. When a guerrilla takes arms against the State in times of democracy
and political liberty, they are acting--besides that of the laws--with
Messianic arrogance, with disrespect towards the public who elect those who
govern. It is natural--it is even desirable--that the State react and be able
to defend itself. It is possible that in this reaction there will be excesses,
but if there are they do not deserve more condemnation than the initial
offense; or they are treated equally or, in the case of distinctions being
established, they would seem more benign from a social viewpoint, given that
they have not begun with a fraudulent or selfish design.
When we are in a dictatorship or totalitarian State the situation is
different. Those who previously took up arms in those cases are moved by a
politically respectable proposition, even if the form of protest be violent. In
Uruguay this situation did not apply because the Tupamaro guerrillas acted only
against democracy, which they damaged and weakened, and when that fell they
already had been dismantled by the Armed Forces, their greater contingent in
exile abroad. A similar insensitivity is that which today animates the violent
groups acting in Chile, when a model government leads the nation on a
democratic path.
A reasonable general question is: how is it possible that justice, the
clarification of a violation of human rights and its natural punishment, can
signify an attack upon public institutions or order? For the simple reason that
we are before the results of a political conflict, of a civil war or something
analogous. When those deeds or violations appear in isolation, the resultant of
action by minorities opposed to the system, it is one thing, yet when we are
before confrontations that involve the important nuclei of society and the
institutions of the State itself, when we have present--arrayed in the nation-
-the same forces, at times the same protagonists from the old struggles, we are
under the risk of reproducing the conflict. Is it logical to ignore it and
again place the entire society at risk?
When in March of 1985 the amnesty for guerrillas and political prisoners
was voted, they were given general access without restrictions. This went far
beyond the projections that the Executive Power had submitted the first day of
the session. That had not included blood offenses but the Parliament pardoned
them equally. The Executive Power could partially veto the law and debate it
with the Parliament or simply comply with the pronouncement, which had obtained
a great majority. We choose the latter, giving priority to the search for
peace. We could not ignore that our veto, no matter how moral it might be, even
or especially if it contributed sound arguments and doctrines, would introduce
a confrontation with Parliament; nor could we ignore that it would excite
passions and that, certainly, we would have permanent agitation concerning
those prisoners, those who sought vindication from the angle of sacrifice: the
years in prison and the maltreatment received in many cases justified amnesty.
Many people of good faith felt this. It was not sensible to ignore it.
Similarly, we could not ignore that the military forces, convinced their
actions, even with excesses, had been oriented to the defense of the State,
were going to feel hurt and reactions of diverse sorts would be produced in
their breast.
Impossible, then, to elude the social reality. Not to seek a legal
solution ended by becoming escapism, and one supposes that the legislator or
public administrator is to prevent whatever risk comes into view.
This is the reason, definitely, why amnesties have always existed
following periods of violence. Universal history is full of those episodes and
our Uruguayan shows 22 laws of that nature. "Amnesty has been the traditional
solution of our nation," says the historian Juan Pivel Devoto in a work
specifically on amnesty in the national tradition. Francisco Bauzá,
another great Uruguayan historian of the 19th century, says in this regard:
Political errors are forgivable errors when they operate within the
social context; because no one has sufficient dispassionate calm to be
actor and impartial judge in a political question. Such that they fall of
themselves under the common criterion of an amnesty or of a pardon, which
always is a necessary act after great commotions.
If we look towards the distant past, we can remember Cicero following the
demise of Julius Caesar. The Senate met assuming its historical role, but in
the street, threatening, Caesar's legions awaited orders. He said then,
referring to the necessity of defending reconquered liberty:
Recently the state of the Republic was such that one bent to the yoke of
whoever dictated our decisions with arms in hand, instead of allowing us
to prescribe that which needed to be done. Today things have changed: our
decrees are our own, dictated in fact be we ourselves; we are free to
choose peace with liberty or civil war with tyranny. Whatever be the
disposition that you decree, that will be the rule of conduct for all.
This being so, I think it is absolutely necessary to erase all types of
discord, forget all resentments, abjure from all enmities, so as to return
to peace, to friendship, to the unity of ancient times. For no other
reason, it is enough to recall that when this union reigned among
ourselves, it gave us the strength and the push, was the origin of our
conquests, of our wealth, of our glory, and of our power; and we do not
forget that when that union dissolved into intestinal dissension, the
empire ceased to grow and every day became weaker.
Much nearer in time is Spain, whose exemplary process of transition has been a
constant source of inspiration. There they amnestied all the offenses and
errors of political intentionality, without distinguishing deeds or authors.
The most diverse sectors of Spanish life were summoned to the spirit of the
amnesty, and indeed that reached among others to military and policies accused
of torture.
A communist deputy, Marcelino Camacho, said in that moment:
We considered that the cornerstone of this politics of national
reconciliation had to be the amnesty. How could we reconcile those of us
who had been killing one another if we did not erase that past for once
and for all?... We want to close one era, we want to open another. We the
communists, precisely who have suffered so much, we have buried our dead
and our rancor... We request amnesty for all, without exclusion of any
place where anyone may have been.
The newspaper El País, in Madrid, then wrote in an editorial:
The amnesty is an exceptional action, justified by reason of State and by
the necessity of writing cancelled and new account on such bloody and
painful events for a people as a civil war--a war among brothers--and a
long dictatorship. Democratic Spain should look forward from now on,
forget the blame and the facts of the civil war, to abstract from the 40
years of dictatorship. The glance towards the past should have as purpose
only reflection upon the causes of the catastrophe and the means to
prevent its repetition. A people neither can nor should lack historical
memory; yet this should serve it to nourish peaceful projects of
coexistence into the future and not to feed grievances regarding the past.
Thousands of equally inspired pages could be brought to the account. 40 years
of dictatorship kept many wounds open, many very near. Certainly the episodes
of the civil war were distant but not the torture and summary justice.
Nevertheless, Spain turned the leaf over, as the president of the Spanish
Government, Felipe González, said more than once, and constructed a
democracy never before fully experienced.
There are those who dogmatically insist on the necessity of justice at any
price. It does not seem morally sustainable. Justice is a value, but so is
peace. It is not possible to sacrifice peace to accomplish justice. First
because it is not demonstrated that one is worth more than the other. Second
because it does not make sense to impose justice backwards--which is
irreversible--when we resume compromising forwards, which is controllable. As
against conflict, the true justice is peace, because it is the only one
possible. And if this assumes a pardon, then welcome the pardon. As Weber
magisterially states, it is not ethically acceptable to disengage from the
predictable consequences of one's own action.
It is not wrong to think, furthermore, that when dealing with conflicts of
a political nature, to arrive at a clean and objective administration of
justice is difficult. The climate created by public opinion, the open or
subliminal pressure of the press, the past of the judge themself who takes the
case (who just assumed her office, imbued with democratic restoration, or who
cooperated with the dictatorship and now needs to demonstrate his independence
of criteria), are factors with weight. In fact there is no right to demand from
a judge that, Law in hand, they resolve a conflict of a political nature. If we
find ourselves up against communal crimes we would not have this type of
concern. If everything has such a particular bias it is by the political nature
of these violent phenomena. A political conflict only has a political
resolution and this must be understood.
A very common argument, of acceptable moral intentionality, is that, it
being necessary to prevent the recurrence of excesses, consciousness of
impunity should not be developed. The historical experience tells us the
contrary. If punishments had an exemplary value, capital punishment would not
be ineffective, as it is in those States that retain it for crimes of greater
seriousness, whose recurrence continues.
When one wishes to avoid repressive excesses what should be prevented is
the reappearance of violence, whether of a political or social order. If no one
commits violence no one will have to repress it. Unfortunately violence is so
disturbing and persistent in Latin America that it is taxing to be optimistic,
yet one should have the honesty to recognize that the only effective prevention
of repressive excesses derives from having no object to repress. War is not
impeded by laws; its effects are not erased by decree.
One will say that violence has very often appeared as a reaction to
political dictatorship or situations of social injustice. The first is true in
some cases and that has given merit to revolutions, which always culminate,
precisely, with an amnesty. Violence as a social response if something else
now, because when there is political democracy under no condition could it be
accepted that one group emerge to substitute for the popular will which is
expressed in elections and by force impose its particular conception of
justice.
The necessity that at least this truth be known should be mentioned. The
proposition is laudable and should be attempted. Yet one must remain conscious
that that search can be as conflictual as the exercise itself of justice, and
nor can it be limited in time. It happened in Uruguay with the Investigatory
Commissions of Parliament, which not finding evidence continued and continued
in the search for what by all lights seemed impossible, for the simple reason
that in those cases no one left a track and that which might be one is
difficult to find after years. The problem then is not to fall into the trap of
continuing indefinitely paralyzed in the debate of the past.
Our experience has been that of history: for great evils, great remedies;
for big hatred, grand pardons; for profound sorrows, the greatest generosity
possible. At times it might not be enough. But when there could not be a pardon
nor could there be justice in the overall process, because they are cases where
the conflict was not over and thus there was nothing to do but negotiate an
armistice or dilute the conflict.
Naturally, that experience is not a miraculous recipe, applicable with its
specific solutions in every case. Political particularity is a condition unique
to each national configuration and should be recognized to also find the
solution that responds to the sensibility of that society, to its tradition and
to the relation of forces which it illustrates. That which is universal is the
spirit to confront the situation. If there is not a true spirit of
reconciliation and an authentic will to pardon, like the will to sacrifice, it
becomes very difficult to attain peace. We should all be disposed to renounce
some part of our point of view, and no one has the right to try to take the
gains.
The ethics in play are political and not individual; and this should be
understood as such or we shall lose ourselves on the road.
THE UNIFORM AND THE SUITThe soldier by trade acquires
ever greater power to the degree by
which the courage of a collectivity
declines.
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON
ONE OF THE GREATEST lacks in the formation of Latin American leadership is its
extremely scant knowledge of the military reality. To the politicians imbued
with a liberal life-concept, the years of dictatorship provoked an attitude of
alienation in them and even a rejection of the conception. Unforeseen, as a
result of that disinterest, war had become reserved to a form exclusive to the
military, and thus their subordination of power to a government constituted of
rights became difficult, be it only a step. They speak in a low voice, as if of
a taboo, despite that it concerns nothing less than the co-active
administration of the power of the State, something cosubstantial with its own
existence.
This situation is found in Latin America in general, considering so many
years in which the military forces have operated as a political factor, when
not the government itself. It is not as paradoxical as it seems insofar as the
polis has felt threatened and developed a sort of allergic antibody,
corresponding in turn to an equal vector in the opposite direction. In general
the military do not see the politicians as persons with disciplined conduct,
the concept of authority and gravity in the necessary functions for managing
matters as serious as those where they must intervene. Exceptionally they come
to respect some political figures, who when exercising the Presidency--which
supposes the supreme command of the Forces--they have done so with authority
and respect towards them.
It Uruguay too it has been so, even though the Colors Party could show a
greater interest in the theme, a result of its long period of exercise of
power. The years of the dictatorship and the subsequent transitions have not
much improved this panorama. The politicians who are interested are those of
the Marxist left, to attack, or even some of the democratic parties whom they
complement, respond with of reformist vision of the military institutions
totally disconnected from reality. Inversely others, from the right, act like a
mere reflexive movement, defending the Armed Forces, but without elaborating an
intelligent position, capable of being successfully sustained.
In Uruguay nevertheless, it is in the military medium itself where much
more interest has been perceived in causing the political leadership to
interest themselves in the life of the institution. It even involved
constituting a group of retired officials, specialists in participating in
academic seminars which in recent years have proliferated, in the Ministry of
Defense. This last is also very curious: it shows more academic than political
interest.
The panorama is not altogether different in the rest of the nations. In
Argentina, vast political sectors seem very remote from military life, yet on
occasion even confront it. In Brazil, where the parties of a national scale are
very weak, the situation is repeated and the same could be said of almost all
the rest of Latin America. Venezuela perhaps is an exception, but this stems
more from the military's interest in approaching the problems of its specialty
than that of a political vocation for them.
With this backdrop of separation, the difficulty is predictable of
controlling the issue in a period when the turbulences of the past are
projected upon the present.
The greatest problem for the political leadership is in understanding that
some Armed Forces who have exercised power do not emerge the same from it. It
is more; it can be said that this transformational process is quite similar to
the experience with antisubversive action. A war in which the ideological
ingredient was very important is evidently also bound to produce very strong
politicization as well in the Armed Forces, as a psychological and doctrinaire
instrument for prevailing.
It is simplistically thought in the civilian media that subordination, an
element so cosubstantial with the military structure, is easily achieved by the
government, and that at the same time the higher commands are projected
downward. It suffices to recall the dramatic episodes of rebellion produced in
Argentina during the administration of doctor Alfonsín--with the
subsequent changes in command--to be aware of this difficulty.
The Armed Forces, and especially the armies, are vertically organized
where subordination is fundamental, but this does not function that way after a
period of political exercise. Antisubversive action itself leads the military
to hyper-political worry, and the tactical decentralization called for in this
type of combat serves to generate an official of questionable discipline. This
evolution has been the perturbing nucleus that led many armies to a coup of
State, as clearly happened in Uruguay. If after such a stage the direct
exercise of government occurs, naturally we cannot obtain it with traditional
Armed Forces.
The Armed Forces who attacked the guerrillas employed a doctrine of
revolutionary war which, on a French basis from the times of Indochina and
Algeria, later was added to development of the so-called "doctrine of national
security." Our experience during those years clearly showed those influences.
The novel The Centurions, by Jean Larteguy, was an indisputable
military best seller in the decade of the Seventies. To the extent that a coup
of State is arrived at as a natural prolongation of the struggle itself.
Against apparently uncontrolled subversion, before an enemy who is everywhere
and relies of powerful help, the military view the civil institutions and most
especially the political leadership as weak, feeling they are excessively
prudent, if not vacillating or even complacent. They come to believe that, with
the necessity of victory, any means may be used.
Today the danger of that vision is clear, of that attitude and of the
generalization of these doctrines into permanent war. Nevertheless, noticing
this error should not lead to another of opposite sign: ignoring that the
military arrived at this situation in the course of a confrontation for
which they were neither ideologically nor psychologically nor even tactically
prepared, or also to ignore that there they found the source of legitimacy for
their eruption into political life, with a feeling that remains intact. Very
few are the military who say, in Uruguay, Chile or Brazil, that they regret the
coup of State in which they participated or the military stage of government
they experienced, even those who sincerely support an institutional transition.
They would not say so publicly, yet this is how they feel. And it is essential
to keep this in mind. One is not before a penitent; we are before someone who
in analogous circumstances would proceed in the same way, while believing that
that stage is superceded and sincerely desiring that it not recur.
The politician usually errs in this respect. They keep seeing either a
lurking dictator or a democratic military to be found near to the political
center of their institution. Both may exist, but it is not among them where a
firm transition will reside. With the first, it could be nostalgia for power;
with the second, because his politicization has weakened his military
professionalism and he will easily lose ground with his comrades. In this
regard the already cited document proved of enormous value, that presented by
the Uruguayan Armed Forces to the president of the Republic in November of 1986
to facilitate the road to the amnesty law.
Where the military usually err is in the vindication of dissimulation of
their dictatorial past and in minimizing the wounds that their passage through
power has left. Situated as the defender of the State against subversion, the
Latin American military has a legitimate and even convincing argument; they
lose, on the other hand, when they project from the dictatorial period and do
not notice that the republican and democratic sentiment of the people is strong
enough to transform this situation. No matter the violations suffered in the
democratic program founded by the Liberators, it keeps integrating our culture
and the coup of State will never cease being a sin, no matter the apparent
explanation which can surround it. The same occurs when the consequences of the
absolute exercise of power are left in the past. By its very structure--
prepared to wage war--and by its doctrinaire conception of antisubversive war,
which can even include the takeover of power, the military assumes that that
era is over and does not keep the force it holds in the spirit and the memory
of the people. The dismissed functionary or one subjected to a military
discipline foreign to the civil function, the family member who endured the
repression, the young student who suffered harassment or blows at some
demonstration, the politician who saw her world collapse and her personal
expectations and very subsistence frustrated, forget very slowly. It has been a
very strong trauma and surmounting it is costly. It requires much greatness of
spirit or, in either case, a certain time.
A very prominent theme in this relation with the Armed Forces is the
attitude towards these divisions, inevitable in the years of displacement from
the military axis to a civilian preoccupation. This is very common.
In Argentina a moment cannot be remembered, in the last 60 years, when at
least two tendencies were not clearly displayed.
In Uruguay, with the trauma of the coup of State of 1973 behind it, which
certainly left those who opposed it by the wayside, it seemed that the Forces
would preserve a monolithic unity; it did not transpire this way and, a little
down the road, some were called "gorillas" and others "Peruvianists." The first
clung to the conception of the Forces who intervened to restore order and
returned to their professionalism, like one chapter more in their battle
against Marxist subversion; the second, influenced back then--still--by the
socializing and nationalist attitude of general Velasco Alvarado in Peru. At
the moment of search for a democratic exit it is also normal that divisions
shall return between those who maintain a political position and those
representing a professional attitude. Those remained with their doctrinaire
antisubversive fanaticism, while the latter dissent, convinced that best for
the institution is to save it from that excessive politicization.
In the nature of human relations there is the fact that, in the process of
search for an exit, personal and political approximations are produced among
those on one side or another who share the same activity. Obviously this
alienates those who are adversaries or dubious of the exit, although it is an
error to think that all this is crystallized in advance.
Customarily, when the Armed Forces are out of power attacks from outside
begin and that serves to bring them together. For a time the old tendencies may
co-exist but they begin to dilute to the degree that the retirement of the old
chiefs occurs and in which the critiques revive their corps spirit, so akin to
the military mentality. There then results a dangerous game of siding with the
branches. When that happened within an Armed Forces party which occupied power,
it was naive not to take advantage of that circumstance, of a strict political
nature. However, when one lives in a period of democratic normalization--or of
plain and simple normality--it is very dangerous to play with divisions among
the military. It is never wise to stimulate divisions between the different
branches, who have classic rivalries and even certain prejudices. A respectful
attitude towards the relation of forces among themselves preserves the
neutrality of the civil power and does not exhaust the president; it definitely
maintains the indispensable climate so that if those Forces have to act they
will do so in a professional and subordinate manner. When into the normal chain
of command other solidarities of a political nature are introduced, the
efficacy of the institution is clearly debilitated.
There is one way to maintain the armed institution of the
"fundamentalists" or "painted faces" (as they have been called in Argentina):
to take care that those chains of command function naturally starting with an
adequate strengthening of the commanders in chief and superior officials. At
the same time, grant the Forces a unity of doctrine and leadership with a clear
strategic line. For that there is nothing worse than not having a well-drawn
strategy or fragile loyalty to institutions of higher command (first, the
president).
The military doctrine then comes to be an important topic, as much in the
transitional period as in the future. The confusion over the years of
confrontation with Marxist subversion or the exercise of power today have,
additionally, another very significant element: the fall of the communist
systems.
Until recently the thesis was speculated that one dealt with a
circumstantial retreat which would be rapidly reversed. German unity, the
disappearance of the German Democratic Republic, is itself sufficiently
expressive as a political fact to demonstrate the contrary. Of course, no one
can guarantee that all will go well in the Soviet Union, but at this juncture
it is not realistic to continue speculating about the hypothesis that Gorbachev
is only disguising the old communism. The modifications already introduced and
the political costs actually paid are too major not to appreciate that we
really see a profound intent. Subversive movements, financed, prepared or
supported by the communist world now lack a headquarters and the possibilities
for a guerrilla resurgence in the world now derive more from Islamic
fundamentalism or from local situations.
The defensive strategy of combat against an international enemy, Marxism-
Leninism, which largely consumed the armed institutions, gives way--
necessarily--to another vision. That violent Marxist movements or permanent
antidemocratic agitation will exist is another matter. It occurs, but now we
deal not with the global bellicose phenomenon that was visualized before. The
challenge now is to construct a doctrine consistent with security for the
democracy, which locates the Armed Forces in their military role of service to
the State and to a democratic institutionality adopted as the national
philosophy.
It cannot be ignored that our armies are unequal to those of the nations
of Western Europe, heirs of the monarchical traditions and lacking a political
presence of the sort they have in Latin America. Here the armies were born with
Independence--or with a foundational revolution as in Mexico--and it is natural
that they consider themselves the depositories of the essential values of
nationality. The concept of professionalism does not neutralize the attitude
derived from those values, which introduces a political ingredient of a very
particular character. This results in their activity on the political scene not
displaying the same features as a party. Even the Brazilian army, born not as a
popular revolutionary force because the country's independence has its
leadership among the monarchy itself, identifies with those same national
values and treats as its own, vast political enterprises such as the unity of
the Federal State. This feeling has its pathology and is the unfolding of a
chauvinism that automatically concedes a monopoly to the military in the
defense of the national values; the way of fighting the sickness is not to deny
it but to correct it, giving to politics the national sentiment which it
naturally possesses, lifting it above the partisan disputes and the petty
confrontations.
The idea is frequently naively planted in parliamentary circles of
reforming the study plans in military schools through some political
interference that can change them, infusing a vision of a more civil and
democratic world. Usually changes are needed, particularly along the line of
modernization, but that idea of "civilizing" the military is a contradiction in
itself: the military has a specificity which cannot be annulled. The moralist
who embarks on these themes and reads about strategic plans and war games,
begins with horror regarding the carnage and destruction which the use of force
presupposes because she has another mental scheme. We have here the challenge,
as always, in organizing military forces. The question, then, is not imagining
that we are going to make the military public functionaries like any others.
That cannot nor should not be done. The problem is to create a combatant of
technical professionalism, profoundly conscious of the power that society has
placed in his hands to defend itself. A very solid moral foundation is required
so that this destructive force will only be used according to foreseen
procedures, under foreseen circumstances and to the benefit of its clients,
that is, the Republic. It concerns a very special mission, much closer in its
genesis to the religious or the scientific, also possessors of enormous powers-
-one spiritual, the other material--that are essential yet which, badly used,
possess a capacity for unlimited harm (we think of the fundamentalist fanatics
or of Nazi genetic research).
At root, this vision will begin with a negative idea concerning the very
existence of the armies: when one resignedly concludes that it is not possible
to disband them, reasoning about the succession of a structure without true
military substance retreats.
Including the military theme with the programs of the political
collectivities or the levels of administration passes for clearly dealing with
this situation. If a society does not unequivocally comprehend the presence of
the Armed Forces and the sense of their mission, it becomes difficult to
organize that later. An adequate definition of the principle facilitates the
later developments.
From this perspective, it is essential to affirm that the Armed Forces
represent a fundamental element in the construction of any State. The sovereign
exercise of power by the State over a determinate territory is unimaginable
without the adequate instruments for the eventuality of having to defend it by
deeds. The integrity of any State implies the necessity of being willing to
defend its identity.
In regard to small countries like Uruguay, it has sometimes been said that
this principle is not valid given that the disproportion of forces against any
eventual adversary makes this defensive potential, which furthermore is
enormously expensive, illusory. The argument does not convince us: a small
nation, precisely for being small, should be able to defend itself more than
any other; if not, it will be an easy target of any adventurous appetite. The
slight magnitude of its forces, insufficient for a global confrontation with
its hypothetical enemies, also forces development of an active international
politics which diplomatically ensures the assistance of indispensable allies.
However, if these allies are not offered the minimal conditions of resistance
so that their help may arrive, this international politics will have
problematic practical substance. The recent episode of the invasion of Kuwait
by Iraq is ample testimony in this regard: if tiny Kuwait could have resisted
the invasion for only 48 hours, the scenario would have been totally modified.
To accept, then, national defense as an obligation of every State carries
the commitment to organize Armed Forces appropriate for this exercise and
permeated with the idea that their service, always a sacrifice, is at the
command of the democratic institutions which comprise part of the exercise of
national sovereignty. If the society has defined itself as democratic, and is
self-determined in this respect, the first duty of the soldier is the global
defense of the system. A military is not acceptable that limits its role to the
defense of the territorial sovereignty and does not extend its duty to the
democratic institutions which comprise not only a system of government but a
lifestyle. Nor is the political vision acceptable that wishes to limit the
Armed Forces to some democratic indoctrination and the carrying out of civil
tasks, at the expense of its indispensable priorities as a military formation.
The Armed Forces can and should collaborate with tasks of development or
of administration. It is not healthy that all the wealth of energy and
organization which they dispense is underutilized. Yet they cannot confuse
terms, awarding priority to that which is secondary.
An adequate definition of these aspects is fundamental so that any
democracy may project itself into the future with tranquility, without
illusions, without taboos. The requirements of a modern society, especially in
the poor countries, force limitation of the maximum for military investments.
Thus, the latter should be adequately planned. Not to do so, or to confuse the
terms of reference, is to introduce a foundational defect in the institutional
structure.
If something is urgently lacking today to achieve limitation of an arms
race, it is resolution of the border disputes among the states of Latin
America. That task is political and not military; it presents a very specific
challenge. Nobody has the right to demand the reduction of military investment
if they have not previously made all the necessary efforts to overcome those
situations, which are at the base of the legitimate demand of the Armed Forces
to be prepared to eventually confront the military consequences of those
diplomatic problems.
Were the resolution of said conflicts attained, it would be much easier to
envision a modern restructuring of smaller, well-equipped Armed Forces, which
by their size alone would not be a destabilizing internal factor, but who would
at the same time efficiently accomplish the job of preserving the society from
which they emanate.
REQUIREMENTS FOR GOVERNABILITYComparative analysis of Western regimes
reveals an insuperable contradiction between
the expression of opinions and the
expression of will. The first requires that
numerous parties offer themselves to the
vote of the citizens with the goal that
everyone can select a candidate close to
their preferences. That implies also that
the seats selected be exactly proportional
to the ballots received. The second (the
expression of will) has need of opposite
mechanisms. So that the electors can impose
the government of their choice and this have
the means to function for all legislation, a
reduced number of parties is necessary, each
endowed with a strong discipline and sorted
according to a bipolar system. To express an
opinion is to vote for the desirable. To
express will is to vote for the possible.
The first is an infantile behavior, only the
second is adult. Between them stands the
whole distance that separates the pleasure
principle from the reality principle.
MAURICE DUVERGER
BEYOND THIS TIME of transitions what will come? Will Latin American democracy
be able to definitively consolidate itself and place itself in the seat of a
prosperous business of development?
That is the question that all of us have been asking for a long time and
which also leads us to look backwards. For in some states of the hemisphere the
militarist phenomenon was the simple expression of an endemic political
instability stemming from their Independence itself, but in others--those of
the Southern Cone--it was a rupture, a break in a long and apparently stable
democratic process, constructed by the relatively educated and modern middle
classes. In them it is deeper although more clear: a primitive society has been
unable to attain the minimal organizational basis of a state of rights, and
the militarism is a primary organic state response to clan or semi-feudal
anarchy. In the others, however, it is the weakening of a system which seemed
to have reached maturity and cracked.
What happened to Uruguay during the Seventies so as to fall into a climate
of social agitation, political violence and finally dictatorship? What occurred
in Chile? They were nations with a large civic trajectory, a cultivated
political class, and relative yet noteworthy development in the hemisphere.
It gives the impression that around the end of the Fifties, the post-War
period over, those countries did not know how to adapt economically to the
circumstances of a more competitive world, lived in a very acute climate of
social demands, the middle classes took refuge in voluntarist utopias without
accepting the requirements of the change, the radicalized minorities fell into
messianic violence and the political parties fragmented, becoming impotent
toward ensuring the governability of the system.
The Argentine process began far earlier, in the Thirties, and also
contains all the characteristics of a situation of exhaustion. Constructed
under the illustrious and conservative leadership of the 1880's generation, the
prosperous Argentina of the day, with investment levels higher than the United
States and the majority of Europe, it did not understand the winds of social
change. The conservative scheme was repeated internally, enclosing her in her
past success. The access of the masses to political control was not accepted,
without recognition that the accumulated wealth implied socially protective
reforms. And thus began a dialectical play of angry protests and authoritarian
responses.
If those were the problems at the root of the fall, why would the
political classes today be better adapted to the change and the society more
ready for the sacrifices of a much more demanding world? Because experience is
the best source of knowledge and it makes sense that societies recently emerged
from such long crises do not want them to recur.
Europe matured in its idea of unity after the tragedy, the destruction,
the misery of the war. It learned how little it was worth to keep superseded
nationalisms, erected behind border disputes, alive before the magnitude of the
challenge of uniting itself to become something and someone in a world of
superpowers.
Spain matured as well. We all feared what would happen following Franco.
Nevertheless, and perhaps smitten by that same fear of making the old dreams of
hate and war real, we observe an exemplary transition. Problematical,
traumatic, but definitely a fertile intermediate station towards a democratized
and Europeanized Spain.
It was learned that development is not a foreign question but instead
one's own. It is surprising today to measure how little money the Marshall Plan
provided; it only set up the necessary incentive to unchain the forces of change
that were latent and should be developed. Europe did not count on Japanese
fanaticism, which it could not incorporate (the culture, the psychology, are
too different), but consciousness of the effort and the productive mentality
awakened creative energies. And those generated the adequate political
responses, although with problems like those which the events in the life of
general DeGaulle demonstrate.
Have our people matured? The study of the phenomenon of governability is
the order of the day and is the just testimony of that preoccupation. Above all
the need is found that there be a consensus in the society about the form of
governance. Undoubtedly there have been advances in this dimension. Except for
some Marxist-Leninist radicalisms that are no more than islands, the democratic
consensus has become much stronger as much toward the left as toward the right.
Obviously the contemporary world influences this, with the fall of the Marxist
regimes in Eastern Europe, the democratic consolidation of Europe and the
advance which Latin America in general has had. Adventurism seems used up and
now does not arise with the facility that it did during the times of protest
during the Sixties.
The State as an organization suffers from a severe crisis. Built at the
century's beginning as an instrument of social protection, it itself has
devolved to be part of the problem. Its exaggerated growth, the inefficiency of
its management of industrial or commercial sectors, the bureaucracy with its
developing sclerosis, require profound reforms. And they reflect the status
quo. Yesterday's adversaries are today's admirers and those who constructed
this enormous apparatus embody in general the function of patricide. It is the
case with the PRI in Mexico, with Acción Democrática in Venezuela,
with Peronism in the Argentine, that today they privatize what they themselves
nationalized earlier. This intellectual and political courage seems
encouraging, because it represents the capacity to respond. But it is not
simple. The conservative tendencies are very strong, too many persons have
become accustomed to the sensation of security, although not of prosperity,
which "the philanthropic ogre" offers and do not wish to run the risks of a
competitive society.
The parties, in consequence of that state crisis and of the decline in
ideological debate, today undergo a situation of internal crisis. Yesterday's
certainties are today's doubts. But if we focus on these we do not advance
towards tomorrow, and are forever further from the Japanese and the Germans in
terms of knowledge and development.
Recent elections in various countries have been an expression of that
situation. The Fujimori phenomenon in Peru or Collor de Melo in Brazil
transcended the parties. The Menem phenomenon in Argentine Peronism or Gaviria
in Colombian liberalism erased the old markers. The sensation of insecurity
that it gives changes everything in the State, the loss of ideological
reference points, the anxiety of the middle classes who desire to rapidly
access the fruits of well-being, translate messily into new political
expressions.
This party crisis reflects upon the efficacy of the political system,
which is frequently accused of disfunctionalities. For example, the offset
between presidential elections and others, whether national, parliamentary or
provincial, obliges the governments to have permanent electoral time, very
different from the time of governing. The necessary calm for administering,
which requires the pressure of unruly demands to be channeled, becomes
unmanageable with the urgencies of the electoral campaigns.
There has begun to be much discussion of the relations among powers and a
current of opinion exists, quite strong in academic circles, which defends the
parliamentarization of the regime, asserting that presidentialism has failed in
Latin America and they should consider a more flexible system. The premise is
arguable and the conclusion perhaps much more, for it is hard to believe that
in nations of republican and clan tradition parliamentarism might bring
efficacy and security to government. Yet beyond this analysis very profound
debates are occurring, revealing the need to adapt structures.
The need is felt, in society, to re-evaluate the private sectors, the
intermediate organizations, the modalities of participation. The democratic
wave does not stop at the political system. It wants to reach the entire
society. This carries the risk that it is a dangerous corporatist tendency:
where the state gives way to a group of partisans, with identical monopolistic
passion and also the seed of the bureaucratizing disease, as was already
experienced in the decades of 1920 and 1930. The challenge, then, is to
conceive a more decentralized State and a more participatory society without
falling into that temptation.
To ensure governability, beyond the dysfunctions of the system, assumes
aiming for a more flexible political system, less suffocating towards private
activity and a motivator for the citizens' participation. Yet all this should
definitely be grounded in the development of the society. One cannot imagine a
real consolidation of the democratic system without actually achieving greater
economic efficiency and, as a consequence, greater social efficacy. For this
perspective, Europe is demonstrating its experience.
The business of development confronts us with the limitations from which
our nations suffer. It is difficult to imagine a real industrial and
agricultural expansion without the new contributions of science and technology.
We could hardly obtain them through our own research, even when the imperious
necessity of developing a basis in those areas exists in order to know how to
absorb what is offered in the market. Looking at concrete episodes, the
technology agreed to is that which the multinationals control and distribute in
their structure, or perhaps that which the equipment vendors necessarily have
to transfer. Thus it is urgent to undertake an enormous effort, prioritizing
those areas such as agriculture, in which the technologies are not universal
and ecological conditions modify their use.
We should create a culture for development and democracy. Just as there is
a strong psychological propensity for change, it is not clear that its
orientation will be adequate and rational. In industry tendencies persist to
demand state paternalism; nuclei of public functionaries take refuge behind the
status quo; agricultural producers feel justly aggrieved by the protectionism
of the European Community, yet in the end enviously demand the same for
themselves; the unions continue to prefer salarial claims to discussions of
productivity and the other factors that can bring stable life to the enterprise
from which they live. Everyone sponsors the change, but starting with sacrifice
of the neighbor.
In our countries the impresario is not the respected--and even admired--
character that the developed economies have generated. The common man distrusts
him and the political media contract with him by necessity, without fully
discovering the social meaning of his role as the main actor in development. In
the last years Chile may be the country that has managed to change the most,
but this has been as a consequence of a phenomenal "shock," represented first
by the attempt to construct a socialist economy in Allende's times and a
drastic return to the market economy under Pinochet. The combination of both
periods has generated, in 20 years, the emergence of a businessman with a truly
competitive and international mentality. The question is whether one has to
pass through traumas of that magnitude to understand the need for change, or
whether civic education can accomplish it through persuasion and culture.
We have no right to pessimism, even if it be an intelligent pessimism.
Beyond these problems and limitations, it is necessary to reactivate the
democratic culture. In every domain one should understand that political
liberty is compatible with social discipline, that tolerance is the only
spiritual attitude for processing the different criteria, that poverty should
be overcome through society's continued effort, and not by a revolutionary
explosion. Human rights only shine when the democracy is stable and there is
peace; let us care for it, then. Over and over one has wished to search beyond
democracy and over and over again the attempt has failed. We shall struggle
within democracy, its spirit, its philosophy, not only on the level of
political action but also in the enterprise, the syndicate, the study center,
the family itself. Let us do so with rationality, comprehending their rules,
understanding the responsibilities imposed upon us without paralyzing us with
the fear of drowning in impatience. The union outburst is as malign as business
conservatism, political demagoguery as journalistic nihilism, economic
utopianism as social stasis. Let us change, always change. Renew ourselves,
always renew ourselves, but knowing what, how and why we change; for what, how
and why we renew ourselves.
Julio María Sanguinetti is a lawyer and was president of Uruguay
between 1985 and 1989. [And 1995 to 2000] He served ten years as a deputy,
was minister of Culture and Education and of Industry and Work and occupied
the presidency of the National Fine Arts Commission of Uruguay (1967-1973)
and of UNESCO's Regional Centre for Book Development in Latin America and
the Caribbean with offices in Bogotá. His journalistic activity unfolded
in the Uruguayan dailies Acción and El Dia and in the weekly
Friday's Mail; in actuality he is a columnist for the magazine
Visión and in the news agency EFE and in El País of Madrid.
Among his books: The New Constitution, The Almeida Case and The Nation:
nationalism and other isms.
Political circumstances brought Julio María Sanguinetti to be a
protagonist in the long process of democratic transition in Uruguay after the
dictatorship that, in 1973, shattered the institutional tradition of that
nation. Thus in these pages the author speaks from his own experience with
regard to the Uruguayan case, of a political phenomenon that in the decade of
the Eighties, and until today, appears as the common denominator for the great
majority of the nations of Latin America; the transit toward the installation
of democratic republican systems. This transition, buoyed by continental
unanimity, takes place in a regional context characterized by the dismantling
of the authoritarian regimes and the rejection of the revolutionary solutions
and, along the universal plane, in a situation in which the downfall of the
Marxist utopia and the urgent revaluation and bringing to light of the liberal
ideals are determinant.
Thus, and from the intimacy of his practical politics, Sanguinetti here
analyzes the role that reveals, during an evolution towards democracy, some
key themes and problems: the psychology of the transition, the consensus among
the players, the insertion of the Armed Forces, revision of the immediate
past, the control of the economy, the behavior of the political class, the
participation of civil society. The result is a lucid and serene reflection,
in which the critical attitude of the author approaches a democratic horizon
that is encouraging and where, at the same time, unprecedented challenges call
for creative responses.